Archive of the former site EconWPA.wustl.edu
The University Library of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, was asked if they wanted to host the former EconWPA archive permanently, as MPRA is also hosted and administered by the University Library. We have gladly agreed to take over EconWPA. Since July 2018 the EconWPA data are now accessible via https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de. For questions about EconWPA please send an email to . If you want to submit new papers, please use the Munich Personal RePEc Archive. Many thanks to Bob Parks, who built EconWPA at Washington University, St. Louis.
Bob Parks' statement on EconWPA:
EconWPA began as a conversation between Bob Parks and Larry Blume on January 28, 1993. I located Paul Ginsparg's archive (then xxx.lanl.gov) and he graciously installed his software on a Sun Sparc system which was supporting the department of economics email and computation. EconWPA began accepting papers July 1, 1993 and had ftp, email, gopher and web interfaces. The web interface for submissions was engineered into existence in July 1995. A complete and catastrophic machine failure in 1999 caused the loss of EconWPA's email new paper announcment service at which time there were over 15,000 subscriptions with over 8,000 unique email addresses.
In 2005, Arts and Sciences commandeered the computing services that I had provided to the Department of Economics since 1987. Some might say that the department was sold out, others would (erroneously) claim that centralization is efficient, and still others would claim that I have few marketing skills.
I was told that I could keep operating EconWPA (as well as many other services including rfe.wustl.edu, barnett.wustl.edu, and three RePEc servers) but I would receive no support (hardware, software, or anthing else) and (as had been the case) no compensation. At that point, given the apparent low valuation of my activities by the department, and university, it made no sense for me to continue operating EconWPA or other services.
Thanks to all who have supported EconWPA in the past.
A Chinese curse states May you live in intersting times. I have. Bob Parks - Jan 2006