TMCnet News
U.S. Census Bureau to open a data center at Yale [New Haven Register, Conn. :: ](New Haven Register (CT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 13--NEW HAVEN -- The U.S. Census Bureau has given itself one more thing to count in New Haven. As early as the end of this year, the Census Bureau will open a data research center at Yale University. The center will offer researchers access to a wealth of detailed data for scholarly research. "I've been using these data sets since I got out of grad school," said Peter Schott, an economics professor at Yale who is leading the effort to build the center. "I used to have to go down to Washington, D.C., to get access. Then they put a center in Boston. For the last four or five years, they've had one in New York." Yale is looking at a spot within 37 Hillhouse Ave. as a potential site for the high-security data research center. It would be staffed by personnel from the Census Bureau. As for the data, it will include not only information from the Census Bureau, but also information gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The material is unpublished and access to it is restricted. "It is only open to those who have a research proposal that is approved in advance," Schott explained. He has used the data, for example, to study which kinds of firms export material and why they do so. He also uses the data sets to compare U.S. companies with their counterparts elsewhere in the world. There are 18 data research centers around the country, including New York City, Boston, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. They are administered by the Center for Economic Studies. Officially, Yale's center will be part of the New York Census Research Data Center, a collection of 12 research institutions from Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. The group includes a number of research universities, as well as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the National Bureau of Economic Research. "There are economic sensors here from every sector," Schott said of the accumulated information. "Trade data sets, a repository for a host of healthcare data, epidemiological studies." Besides Schott, other Yale researchers with approved research projects are economics professors Mihsuru Igami, Dan Keniston, Amanda Kowalski and Joseph Shapiro; Xiao Xu of the Yale School of Medicine; economics doctoral student Sebastian Heise; and James Levinsohn, director of the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and professor of economics and management. Call Jim Shelton at 203-789-5664. Have questions, feedback or ideas about our news coverage? Connect directly with the editors of the New Haven Register at AskTheRegister.com. ___ (c)2014 the New Haven Register (New Haven, Conn.) Visit the New Haven Register (New Haven, Conn.) at www.nhregister.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |