Did You Know?

INTRODUCTION:

IMPLAN Economists have received a lot of questions over the years. We have compiled a considerable repertoire of best practices and helpful tips from the trenches. This article outlines the most popular extras we want to share with you.

 FILTERS:

When in doubt, FILTER. When exploring Sector/Commodity specific data in the Region Details, you will need to use the filter to choose the Industry or Commodity you want to see.  Otherwise, you get the default Sector 1 - Oilseed farming (or Commodity 3001 - Oilseeds). And we know we aren’t always looking for information on sunflowers.

Also utilize filters on your Results screen. You can filter to segment your results  by Region, Impact, Group, and Event Name. You can also filter the Dollar Year in your Results to choose the year in which you’d like to report your results. When navigating between the tabs on your Results screen, always double-check that the filters you applied stayed with you.  

 SIZE MATTERS:

The size of the impact you are running does matter. If you are trying to run an MRIO on one zip code versus the other 41,701 zip codes in the U.S., it likely won’t finish as that money will keep bouncing around the country for quite some time. IMPLAN recommends no more than 7 regions in any MRIO.

If you need to run several studies and one is larger, IMPLAN recommends starting with the smaller one.  All of your impacts will be put in a queue, so we don’t want that small study getting trapped behind that large one. 

WAKANDA FOREVER:

You might not know it, but IMPLAN economists tirelessly assembled the first Input-Output tables for the nation of Wakanda. If you have IMPLAN Pro, you can download and examine the economic impact of vibranium. Check out the blog: The Economic Impact of Increasing Exports of Vibranium from Wakanda.

The download will give you two files. You need to put the two files in very specific places.

• .mdb here: C:\Users\candi.clouse\AppData\Local\MIG\Implan\System Data
• .odf file here: C:\Users\candi.clouse\AppData\Local\MIG\Implan\Data Files

 FINAL TRICKS:

You can have multiple tabs of IMPLAN open at the same time. You can set up multiple projects, compare Results across projects, or just look cool. 

IMPLAN works best in Google Chrome and this is what we recommend using. It also works in Edge, Firefox, and Safari. Internet Explorer is not supported - as Microsoft quit using it in 2016.  You can try it, but the map won’t even show up on the Regions screen, so we don’t recommend it.  

If you are having issues with something loading improperly or taking longer than usual, hit save and refresh your browser.  This corrects the majority of issues.

You can search within Spending Patterns by using Control + F.

Older data sets (2012-2018) can be accessed by starting at the Project Screen and selecting New Project rather than starting your project at the Regions Screen.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Economic Impact of Increasing Exports of Vibranium from Wakanda

Written November 20, 2019

Updated February 13, 2020