ABSTRACT
In recent years there have been strong trends in both data availability and computing speed, which will have had dramatic effects on how econometricians approach their tasks. These trends are very likely to continue. To make my discussion easier I will assume that, in the future, computing will be sufficient for all our needs and will be effectively free. These features are almost true now. My home university has a 1 teraflop computer (meaning that it can perform one trillion calculations per second) available for academic use and U.S. government research agencies have a 4.5 teraflop machine available now with a plan for a 100 teraflop machine to come on line in 2004. IBM has already announced work on Blue Gene, claimed to be 500 times faster than any present machine.
