Improving the Accessibility of the NBER's Historical Data.

During its early years, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) assembled an extensive dataset on the pre-World War II economy. In 1978, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research transferred the data from the NBER's handwritten sheets to a machine-readable format. Modern econometric software cannot easily read this format, however, and the data-keying process produced several errors. The authors have converted the machine-readable dataset to a portable format and verified its accuracy using the NBER's handwritten sheets. The dataset is now available on the Internet and can be accessed using standard gopher or web-browser software.