What's New — February 2001


Help us Pick the New Top Ten: Take Our Survey

For the past several years we've had our Ten Best Websites for Socioeconomic data. A lot has changed since we first designated this list, and while we're sure that many of your perennial favorites still belong in the top ten, there are a bevy of new challengers fighting for consideration. You can help decide who is listed on our top ten by taking about two minutes of your time to complete the EconData.Net User's Survey. It's a short point-and-click, web-based survey you can take right now, by going to 
http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?ANKXEJ5WN37C8839X8KV2JEH

In the next couple of weeks we'll send a reminder to all of our subscribers about the survey. The survey will be open for one month, and we'll report the results in the April Stat-Scan newsletter, and, of course, on the EconData.Net website. And while you're at it, we give you the opportunity to tell us how we can improve EconData.Net. Be sure to cast your vote. (Absentee ballots from overseas will not be accepted after the polls close unless accompanied by military insignia, overvotes will be discarded; final results subject to reversal by the Supreme Court).

SITE OF THE MONTH: HUD's State of the Cities Report

February's site of the month is a report and a site rolled into one. Remember in school when the teacher said to "show your work"? Well, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's latest report comparing and contrasting population, housing and economic trends in the nation's central cities and suburbs offers a solid narrative report with a detailed, easy-to-use web-site backing it up. Not only can you get HUD's "State of the Cities 2000" report on-line, you can link to all of the underlying data used in the report, including special tabulations of County Business Pattern data focusing on information workers. The report also contains statistics on comparative crime rates, housing starts, job growth and other "megatrends." If you want to see how your city or metro area stacks up against national trends, this site is a great place to start.
http://webstage1.aspensys.com/SOCDS/SOCDS_Home.htm

NEW LINKS ADDED

We've added a number of new links this month, focusing on sites that offer detailed information on individual firms.

-Benchmarking Tool for Edgar Reports. Edgarscan, developed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, gives you a convenient web-based tool for comparing data from the standard SEC Edgar Reports from individual companies with industry averages. EdgarScan extracts data from the SEC's servers and parses them automatically to generate financial tables with financials normalized to a common format comparable across companies. A small Java applet generates interactive graphs showing financial benchmarks. You can also download tables into Excel charts. Some functions require registration. Try this at:
http://edgarscan.pwcglobal.com (follow the links for edgarscan).

-Startup Technology Businesses. Red Herring, the irreverent weekly journal of the new economy, offers its directory of firm level information at:
http://web1.redherring.com/herringtown/home/home.jsp

-Company and Industry Profiles. The website Business.Com offers detailed information about 10,000 US public companies and 12,000 private companies, including company profiles, executive biographies, financials and recent news. 
http://www.business.com/companies/
Business.Com also offers industry profiles. Find out what's happening in specific industry pages that include in-depth and updated industry profiles, industry-specific news, events, associations and much more...
http://www.business.com/industry_profiles/

-Company Profiles and Industry Reports. US Business Reporter provides a list of company information, searchable by industry group, company name or stock symbol.
http://www.activemedia-guide.com/index.htm
US Business Reporter also includes industry summaries and analyses and data on market share by firm for key industries. This resource is at:
http://www.activemedia-guide.com/industrystat_section.htm

METROPOLITAN HIGH TECH COMPARISON

The Brookings Institute's Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy has just published a study comparing high tech development in 14 US Metropolitan areas. The report compares high tech areas based on tech-related employment concentration, patent activity, and venture capital flows.

The survey, "High Tech Specialization: A Comparison of High Technology Centers," shows, for example, that Washington, D.C., Denver, and Atlanta have high concentrations of employment in software, but very little employment in hardware, while Phoenix has the opposite pattern. San Jose, Phoenix, Portland, and Austin show significant innovation in electronics or software, but little activity in the biomedical field. By contrast, Raleigh-Durham, San Diego, and Boston are formidable biotech innovators, but produce fewer patents in electronics or software.

This report was written by EconData.Net co-founder Joseph Cortright and uses newly available NAICS-based data from the 1997 Economic Census to assess product and market specializations in 14 metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh-Durham, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. The survey and individual metro area profiles are posted at:
http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/cortright/pressrelease.htm

New Metro Area Definitions

For those of you still adjusting to the new North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) that is gradually replacing the venerable Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Code, hold on to your hats. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has just released the new standards for defining metropolitan areas. The new definitions are built around the concept of "core-based statistical areas" (CBSAs)--a geographic entity associated with at least one core of 10,000 or more population, plus adjacent territory closely integrated with the core as measured by commuting. The new definitions are slated to take effect in 2003, and will be used in all future federal statistical reporting.

There'll be two sizes of CBSAs: Metropolitan Statistical Areas (core area > 50,000) and Micropolitan Statistical Areas (core > 10,000, but <50,000). The OMB hasn't designated a name for the places outside the new core-based statistical areas, but in lieu of the unpronounceable acronym OCBSA (ock-bussa?), we'd like to suggest "exopolitan." Maybe you have a better idea. If you do, hurry and let OMB know. Comments are due not later than February 12. To learn more, or participate in the discussion of these new standards, visit the OMB website at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/msa.html


PRAISE FOR ECONDATA.NET

A new book, "Local Government Guide to the Internet" by Priscilla Salant and Christy Dearien, is a readable, hands-on guide to resources on the Internet for cities, counties and other local government officials. We're pleased that the authors recognize EconData.Net as a valuable resource: they call it "The single best site for economic data" and tell their readers "If you bookmark only one website in this chapter, it ought to be www.econdata.net. Quite simply their isn't another site like it." We're grateful for the praise.

You'll find this book to be a comprehensive, carefully explained directory for applying Internet resources to a wide range of local information needs. The "Local Government Guide to the Internet" is published by TVA Rural Studies and the National League of Cities. You can get ordering information by emailing tvars@rural.org.