With National Science Foundation support Drs. John Hartman and Michael Cragg will purchase a an UltraSparc version of the Sun 1000E with 512m of RAM. They will also obtain two Sun Ultra 1 and one Sparc 5 desktop systems, a printer and a range of research software. Wiring necessary to support the system will be installed. Columbia University has a very strong social science research group which consists of economists and sociologists and the computer network will be used by a large number of researchers to pursue a variety of research projects. In economics these include the development of dynamic index methods, studies of general equilibrium models and simulation studies of organizational complexity. Many of these projects use large scale data bases to examine issues such as: the economic and political impacts of government spending, regional economic adjustment in the face of technological change, the globalization of economic activity and estimation of environmental value. Sociological studies focus on issues such as: patterns of international policy convergences among nations, and the analyses of two large data bases, one based on survey research in the former Soviet Union and the other in New York City. Columbia University has been involved in extensive survey research in the former Soviet Union and collected data on topics which run the gamut from housing privatization, economic and political reform to religious and ethnic tolerance. These data form the core of unique survey material to which Columbia graduate students and faculty can access without the need to learn the Russian language. Columbia has also formed a New York City Social Indicators Survey Center which will collect information on a representative sample of at least 1000 households and families in New York city. Core measures of demographic characteristics, family composition, economic and income status, well-being and use of public assistance will be collected to permit researchers to follow families over time. This will serve as a valuable resource for the analysis of social problems and services within New York City. Cutting edge research requires instrumentation which provides fast and easy analysis to large bodies of data as well as the tools necessary to analyze them. The instrumentation to be provided is important because it will increase the research productivity of a large numbers of both senior researchers and students.
