RATS 8         by

• Product Description
• RATS Brochure
  
• Principal Characteristics
• RATS Professional
  
• RATS Add-On Applications
  • CATS 2.0
    
• What’s New in Rats 8.0
• System Technical Requirements
• Rats Newsletter published by Estima

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

RATS provides all the basics you expect, including linear and non-linear least squares, forecasting, SUR, and ARIMA models. But it goes far beyond that, with support for techniques like GMM, ARCH and GARCH models, state space models, and more. RATS also offers unmatched support for Vector Autoregression models, and is one of the few programs to offer spectral analysis capabilities.

RATS can handle time series of virtually any frequency, including daily and weekly, as well as panel and cross-section data.

Menu-driven data wizards and support for reading various text, spreadsheet, and database file formats make it easy to get your data into RATS. Our Professional version adds support for more database formats, including SQL/ODBC data access, for even more flexibility.

The RATS Editor

Our interactive RATS Editor environment allows you to quickly implement econometric analysis tasks, and makes it easy to try different model specifications or techniques without having to rerun entire programs.

You can save your work as a RATS program, allowing you to reproduce your results at any time with just a couple of mouse clicks.

The editor also offers more than thirty menu-driven Wizards that provide point-and-click access to most common tasks, including reading data, displaying graphs, doing transformations, estimating models, and hypothesis testing. These help make RATS an ideal tool for new users and for use in educational settings.

When you use a Wizard, RATS displays the corresponding commands in the editor window so you can actually learn the RATS language through using the Wizards. This also allows you to use the Wizards to build complete programs that can be re-executed again later.

An often-overlooked aspect of econometric research is ensuring that results are reported accurately. RATS addresses this via a powerful report-generation feature for quickly generating accurate tables of reports, which you can export to text or spreadsheet files for direct inclusion in papers and presentations.

High-Quality Graphs

RATS allows you to create publication-quality time series graphs, scatter plots, and contour graphs.

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTICS

Below is a listing of many of the key features supported by RATS. Please note that RATS is designed to be a very powerful and flexible program, so there is no way we can list all of its capabilities here.

Estimation Techniques

• Multiple regressions, including stepwise
• Regressions with autoregressive errors
• Heteroscedasticity/serial-correlation correction, including Newey-West 
  
• Non-linear least squares 
  
• Two-stage least squares for linear, non-linear, and autocorrelated models 
  
• Seemingly unrelated regressions and three-stage least squares
• Non-linear systems estimation
• Generalized Method of Moments
• Maximum likelihood estimation
• Constrained optimization
• Extensive built-in hypothesis testing capabilities.
  
• Pre-written procedures for a huge variety of other tests, including unit-root, stability, and much more
• Limited and discrete dependent variable models: logit, probit, censored/truncated (Tobit), count models
• Panel data support, including fixed and random effects estimators
• Non-parametric regressions 
• Kernel density estimation 
  
• Robust estimation 
  
• Recursive least squares
  
• State-space models, including Kalman filtering and smoothing, simulations, and optimal control models
  
• Neural network models
  
• Linear and quadratic programming
  
• Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models
  

Time Series Procedures

• Easy to specify lags and leads for time-series model estimation and analysis
  
• ARIMA and ARMAX models including multiplicative seasonal models; support for arbitrary lag structures 
  
• Transfer function/intervention models 
  
• Error correction models 
  
• Kalman filter 
• Spectral analysis 

Forecasting

• Time series models
• Regression models
• Exponential smoothing
• Simultaneous equation models (supports unlimited number of equations)
• Simulations with random or user-supplied shocks
• Forecast performance statistics, including Theil U statistics
  

• Unmatched support for VAR models
  
• Error Correction models
  
• Structural VARs. Choice of factorizations, including estimating a factor matrix from a covariance matrix model
  
• Impulse responses, with Monte Carlo and Importance Sampling techniques for standard error bands.
  
• Forecasting
• Variance decomposition
  
• Historical decomposition
  
• Extensive hypothesis testing tools
• CATS 2.0 add-on provides industry-leading cointegration analysis
  

• Univariate and multivariate, including BEKK, diagonal, CC, DCC, and Vech multivariate models
• Support for GARCH-in-mean models
  
• Additional exogenous variables in mean and/or variance equations
  
• Normal, t and GED distributions
  
• Exponential and Asymmetric models
  
• Robust standard errors
  

Working With Data

Data Entry

• Menu-driven Data Wizards for reading in data 
  
• Reads and writes Excel® files (including Excel 2007), text files, Stata®, Eviews®, Matlab®, Haver databases, and other formats
  
• Pro version supports SQL/ODBC access, online access to the FRED® database, CRSP® data, and more 
  
• On-screen data viewer and editor, with point-and-click graphing and statistics tools 
  
• Can handle virtually any data frequency, including daily, weekly, intra-day, and panel data 
• Can automatically convert data to different frequencies
• RATS data file format is fast and easy, supports all frequencies, and allows you to store series of different frequencies on the same file 

Data Transformations

• Flexible transformations with algebraic formulas
• Easy to create trend series, seasonal, and time period dummies 
  
• Extensive filtering operations, including Hodrick-Prescott, Henderson, Spencer, and custom filters
  
• Supports regular, seasonal, and fractional differencing
  

• Time series graphics
  
• X-Y scatter plots
  
• Dual-scale graphs
  
• Box plots
  
• Contour graphs
  
• Ability to arrange multiple graphs on a single page
  
• Copy-and-paste graphs into other applications
  
• Export graphs to many formats, including PostScript and Windows Metafile
  
• User can customize attributes such as line thickness, colors and grayscale levels, and fill patterns
  

• Text-editor based
  
• Point-and-click “wizards” for many tasks, greatly enhancing ease-of-use
  
• Saved programs can be re-run with just a few mouse clicks
  
• Designed so that you can reproduce results, output, and graphs easily and accurately (a critical but often overlooked requirement for producing reliable, publication-quality results)
  
•     * True multiple window support. Simultaneously view your input commands and output, spreadsheet-style “report” windows, graphs, and more
  

• Extensive looping capabilities and support for applying operations to lists of variables make it possible to automate many repetitive tasks
  
• You can write procedures, which can perform complex tasks with a single instruction, and write your own callable functions.
  
• A library of procedures written by rats users from around the world is available free of charge on our web site
  
• A variety of interface-related instructions allow you to create your own drop-down menus, custom dialog boxes, and more
  

• Strong focus on making it easy to get results easily and accurately into documents or other applications.
  
• Tables of output can be viewed in Report Windws, for easy exporting or copying-and-pasting into other applications.
  
• Powerful report-generation features for constructing and exporting your own tables of information.
  
• Easy control over displayed precision in output
  
• TeX: Support for exporting TeX tables
  

RATS ADD-ON APPLICATIONS

CATS (Cointegration Analysis of Time Series) is a set of cointegration analysis procedures for use with the RATS software program. It was written by Henrik Hansen and Katarina Juselius, and is based on the research of Johansen, Juselius, and Hansen.

SYSTEMS TECHNCIAL REQUIREMENTS

RATS for Windows and Macintosh

The Windows and Macintosh versions include:

• The RATS software
  
• RATSData (a stand-alone menu-driven data management utility program)
  
• A huge collection of RATS procedures and example programs, including worked examples from many popular econometrics textbooks.
  
• extensive built-in Help systems
  
• over 1,000 pages of printed documentation, including the Getting Started guide, the RATS User's Guide and the RATS Reference Manual.
  
• Adobe PDF versions of the User's Guide and Reference Manual are also included, along with Walter Enders "e-book", entitled RATS Programming Manual.
  

System Requirements for WinRATS:

WinRATS runs on all recent versions of Windows, including Windows 7, Vista, and XP, as well as Server 2003 and 2008. It should also run properly on older versions, including Windows 98 and NT. Here are the minimum system requirements for running WinRATS:

• a PC with a Pentium or compatible processor
• Memory requirements will depend largely on the size of the data sets you need to work with. You will need approximately 1 Megabyte of RAM for every 128,000 data points. The RATS program itself is fairly compact, and only requires about 1 Megabyte of RAM to load.
  
• a hard disk drive with at least 90Mb of free disk space (for a full installation, including all examples, procedures, and documentation)
• a CD ROM drive 
  
• Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, or Vista.

System Requirements for MacRATS:

MacRATS is a "Universal" OS X application, which means that it runs natively on both Intel-based Macs and on older PowerPC-based Macs. Note that it requires version 10.4 or later of OS X.

• Any Macintosh capable for running OS X 10.4 or later.
• Both PowerPC and Intel CPU's are supported natively.
• OS X 10.4 or later
• Memory requirements will depend largely on the size of the data sets you need to work with. You will need approximately 1 Megabyte of RAM for every 128,000 data points. The RATS program itself is fairly compact, and only requires about 1 Megabyte of RAM to load.
  
• a hard disk drive with at least 90Mb of free disk space (for a full installation, including all examples, procedures, and documentation)
• CD-ROM drive
  

RATS for UNIX and Linux

System Requirements:

• Processor: virtually any CPU running UNIX; Intel Pentium-based or later PC running Linux; a Macintosh running Mac OS X (PowerPC or Intel CPU)
• an ANSI-standard C/C++ compiler (optional for Linux)
• X Windows and Motif libraries (not required for batch mode operation)
• a CD ROM drive
• Disk Space: 100Mb of available space for a full installation
• Memory Requirements: depends largely on the size of the data sets that will be used.
  

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