Unexpected results when a series is copied into another page

[etienne]

Hi,

In some cases, unexpected results happen when a series is copied into another page.

Suppose you have a monthly or quarterly series containing both historical and forecast values stored in an EViews database. Suppose historical values have been revised (or a month that was a forecast is now history) and you want to see how annual (average) values change accordingly, given the forecast remains unchanged.

One may think you can simply:
1) open the database and find the series;
2) drag it into the grey area of the workspace to create a workfile with the series;
3) manually update the series;
4) create a new, annual page;
5) drag the modified series on the tab of the new page to copy it and convert the frequency;
6) open the annual series to read the updated annual values.

This won't work. Modifications are ignored: the annual series are calculated from the original series in the database.

EViews 9.5 Enterprise Edition, 2016-04-27 build. I'm sorry it's not the lastest version, updates are centralized here and not very frequent. I'm pretty sure previous versions gave expected results.

The following steps will reproduce the behaviour described.

1) Create a database with a series for testing

Code: Select all

dbcreate edb_test
wfcreate(wf=wftest) m 2016m1 2016m12
series x = 1
copy x edb_test::x
close wftest

2) Create a new workfile manually by dragging the series icon from the database view into an empty area of the workspace and clicking on Copy to new workfile.

3) Edit the series, for example putting zeros for the 1st half of the year

Code: Select all

smpl 2016m1 2016m6
x = 0
smpl @all

4) Create a new page at annual frequency in the new workfile

Code: Select all

pagecreate(page=a) a 2016 2016

5) Manually drag the series from the Untitled page to the new annual page. Using the copy command will not show the undesirable behaviour.

6) Open the series at the annual frequency. The expected value is 0.5 (the series at monthly frequency contains half zeros, half ones), but it will be 1. The changes made at step 3 are unexpectedly ignored.

Additional notes:
If, after step 3 above, the series was exported back to the database, the annual value would be the expected 0.5.
In the spreadsheet view at annual frequency, a string suggests it is a formula. It is not, as can be seen in the series properties (tab Value indicates Numeric data) and from the object icon, but that might be a clue. From the label view, we see that string in the History field.

Best regards,

Étienne

[EViews Steve]

Thanks for the detailed info.

We were able to reproduce the error and a fix has been made. It will be available in the next EViews 9 patch after today.

Steve