SHAZAM Professional Edition

A large number of changes have been made to the Professional Edition between Versions 9 and 10. These changes include:

• Improvements to the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) designed to make econometric analysis easier to perform.
• An updated Command Editor supporting multiple level undo and redo, setting and removing of breakpoints, command folding (expand and contract loop statements) and syntax coloring as a visual aid to ensure correct commands are entered.
• A Debugger to help detect, locate and correct errors in SHAZAM programs at runtime.
• Formatted Output provides a highly readable output alternative to the traditional raw output.
• Wizards for the immediate execution of SHAZAM procedures or the construction of command statements using a mouse. Wizards may also be used to edit existing commands.
• The Project Viewer keeps all files used or developed with SHAZAM together for easy viewing, editing and modification.
• A Data Editor generates new variables or allows editing of existing ones easily in a spreadsheet style grid. Open and edit a number of command data formats such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, space and comma delimited data directly into the Data Editor.
• Improved Data Connector for importing data into SHAZAM from most common data formats. The Professional Edition comes with drivers available for most common data formats such as Excel, Access, FoxPro, dBASE and Paradox. Connecting to suitable large Database Management Systems (DBMS) such as SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase or Informix can also be done across the LAN, WAN or the Internet. Full support for SQL is enabled and may be used to write complex data queries for the purposes of importing data.
• An integrated Graph Editor and Viewer uses the powerful GNUPLOT to create publication quality graphs, either programmatically or using the Graph Wizard; supports editing graph features using the graph properties dialog.
• Online Help within the Professional Edition is available.

New Command Options

Many new options have been added and hundreds of small changes have been implemented to improve existing commands. A quad precision version of SHAZAM is available for high precision work. Other new options are:

• For programming in SHAZAM, the number of DO-loop levels is increased to 18.
• The NOWHITE option on the DIAGNOS command excludes the computation of the White test statistic for heteroskedasticity.
• The FIXED option on the FC command performs forecasts for fixed effects pool models.
• The TYPE=EBETA option on the MLE command specifies the EBETA type of distribution for the errors.
• The TYPE=MBETA option on the MLE command specifies the MBETA type of distribution for the errors.
• The NPOP= option on the OLS command specifies the population size N to the power P.
• The FIXED option on the POOL command estimates the fixed effects model.
• The CHARVARS= option on the READ command specifies the number of character variables. This option allows input of character variables without using the FORMAT option.
• The HPFILTER option on the SMOOTH command implements the Hodrick-Prescott filter.
• The LAMBDA= option on the SMOOTH command specifies the smoothing parameter for the Hodrick-Prescott filter.
• The SAMEOBS option on the STAT command restricts the sample to ensure that all observations for all variables are non-missing.
• The SAMPSIZE option on the STAT command calculates the sample size required to obtain a 95% confidence interval with a width 2e where e is a margin of error with values ranging from 0.01 to 0.10.
• The NPOP= option on the STAT command specifies the population size to use with the SAMPSIZE option.
• The STEMPLOT= option on the STAT command specifies the number of digits in the stem (usually 1 or 2) for a stem-and-leaf display of the data.

New Commands

• The NAMEFMT command is a new command for controlling the layout of the header line of variable names.