Tools and Links I have Found Useful for Writing and Teaching Macroeconomics

• Kurt Annan's Excel macro for application of the HP filter: http://ideas.repec.org/c/dge/qmrbcd/165.html
• An Excel Macro that converts a selection to a LaTeX table: ftp://ftp.mackichan.com/download/freeware/xl2latex.zip BRILLIANT!
• Shrinking Tables (or other junk) to fit on a page in LaTeX: Add the graphicx package, and use the syntax

  \scalebox{h-scale}[v-scale]{Stuff_to_be_shrunk}.

  Tables (but not necessarily other graphics objects) must be shrunk with identical h- and v- scaling, which can be imposed by inserting the "!" for the v-scale. This and other cool LaTeX table handling tricks found in this document by Lapo Filippo Mori.

• Adding comments to a document: SciWord documentation suggests adding the verbatim package and then creating encapsulated comments, but I'd like to be able to read my comments without double-clicking on an encapsulated TeX field in SciWord. Here's how: (1) download the version package (the file version.sty is available from one of various TeX support groups, for example) somewhere into the C:\swp50\TCITeX\TeX\LaTeX directory; (2) on a new line within the preamble of the document, add the command '\usepackage{version}'; (3) to enter a comment in your document, add an encapsulated TeX field in SciWord with the command '\begin{comment}', then write your comment as you would enter regular text, and then finish with the encapsulated TeX field '\begin{comment}'. Note that, after adding the verbatim package, steps (2) and (3) would work without the version package, but you would be required to hit return twice for each comment in the document when you typeset. (I don't know why, but I didn't work too hard to figure it out; the way I've suggested eliminates the need.)