SOFTWARE REVIEWS: ECONOMETRIC PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS: GAUSS, OX AND S-PLUS 1. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Abstract

There has been a trend among applied econometricians and economists in general to move away from traditional econometric packages in favour of programming environments, where programming can be done with ease and any existing built-in code can be easily modified. These provide a compromise between the traditional 'canned' statistical programs where built-in commands for estimation and testing are readily available, and low-level programming languages where one has the flexibility of programming new code. This article looks at three progrannning environments: GAUSS, Ox and S-PLUS. They are in essence high-level matrix programming languages that include built-in functions and have support for graphics.