The first form of the command may be used to create a new regular frequency workfile with the specified frequency, start, and end date. Subperiod options may also be specified for intraweek or intraday data. See table below for a complete description for each frequency. If you include the optional num_cross_sections, EViews will create a balanced panel page using integer identifiers for each of the cross-sections. Note that more complex panel structures may be created using pagestruct. You may use the @now keyword to specify the current date/time as either the start_date or end_date.

The second form of the command may be used to create a new regular frequency workfile with a specified frequency, start date and number of observations. The end date is calculated as the start date plus the number of periods (determined by the frequency specification) given by num_observations.

The third form of the command is used to create an unstructured workfile with the specified number of observations.

The frequency argument should be specified using one of the following forms:

EViews allows for setting the days of the week and the time of day within intraday frequencies, which include seconds, minutes, and hours. For instance, you may specify hourly data between 8AM and 5PM on Monday through Wednesday. These subperiod options should follow the frequency keyword and be enclosed in parentheses.

To specify days of the week, use integers to indicate the days, where Monday is given the number 1 and Sunday is given the number 7. For example,

indicates a half-hour frequency that includes Monday through Saturday from 8AM to 5PM.

To specify the start and end times, you may use either a 24 hour clock, including minutes and optionally seconds, or a 12 hour clock using AM and PM. For example, each of the following represents 8PM: 8PM, 8:00PM, 8:00:00PM, 20:00, and 20:00:00. Thus, our previous example could have been written:

If you wish to include all days of the week but would like to specify a start and end time, set the date range to include all days and then specify the times. The day of the week parameter appears first and is required if you wish to supply the time of day parameters. For instance,

indicates a half-hour frequency from 10AM to 3PM on all days of the week.

You may also include a time with the start and end date parameters to specify partial days at the beginning or end of the workfile. For example,

creates the same workfile as above, but limits the first day, 1/3/2000, to 10AM - 5PM and the last day, 12/30/2000, to 8AM - 2PM.

Certain frequencies optionally allow you to specify the starting point of the frequency period. Weekly and biweekly frequencies allow you to set the day at which the week begins. Annual, semiannual and quarterly frequencies allow you to set the month at which the quarter or year begins. Setting the starting period is important if you wish to use frequency conversion to convert data from a different frequency.

To specify the start period, simply add an extra term to the frequency symbol, surrounded in parenthesis, containing the day, or month, upon which you wish the frequency to start. For example:

creates a weekly workfile from 2000 to 2010, where each week starts on a Monday.

creates an annual workfile where each year starts in July.

Note that by default, if you do not specify a starting point, EViews will use the period of the specified start_date. To make this difference concrete, consider the commands:

and

Since January 1st, 2000 was a Saturday, the first command will create a weekly workfile where each week starts on a Saturday, and the first observation in the workfile will span the period January 1st-January 7th 2000.

The second command will force EViews to start weeks on a Monday, and thus the first observation will actually span the period December 27th 1999 - January 2nd 2000.

creates two workfiles. The first is a workfile named ANNUAL containing a single page named MYPROJECT containing annual data from 1950 to 2005; the second is a workfile named UNSTRUCT containing a single page named UNDATED with 1000 unstructured observations.

creates the GRILICHES_GRUNFELD workfile containing a page named “ANNUAL” with 10 cross-sections of annual data for the years 1935 to 1954.

specifies a daily workfile from January 3, 2000 to December 31, 2000, including only Monday through Thursday. The day range may be delimited by either a comma or a dash, such that

is equivalent to the previous command.

creates a workfile with 15 second intervals on Tuesday through Thursday only, from 1/3/2000 to 12/30/2000.

will create a monthly workfile starting in January 1995 and ending in July 1997.

See “Creating a Workfile” for discussion.

See also pagecreate and pagedelete.