A
Brief History of
SHAZAM
SHAZAM is a computer package for econometric and statistical computing. An early sighting of SHAZAM is the 1978 article by Ken White in the journal Econometrica (pages 239-240). In following years, SHAZAM has been continuously revised and improved to offer a comprehensive set of econometric methods for model estimation and testing.
SHAZAM has thousands of users in more than 90 countries and is often featured in software reviews. SHAZAM is used in undergraduate and graduate teaching as well as for research published in academic journals. SHAZAM is also used by government and industry.
Computer developers are well-known for their inventive use of acronyms. The origin of the SHAZAM name is an interesting diversion.
SHAZAM is maintained as a highly machine portable system. That is, it can run on most operating systems with very little software modification. SHAZAM is a command language system. The user prepares a SHAZAM program in a command file. SHAZAM processes the command file and produces an output file of results. The command language structure of SHAZAM is suited for applications such as the specification and estimation of complex models of economic behaviour or Monte Carlo simulation studies for assessing the statistical properties of test statistics.
