RATS

What is RATS (by Estima)

RATS (Regression Analysis of Time Series) is a fast, efficient, and comprehensive econometrics and time series analysis software package.

For more than two decades, it has been the econometrics software of choice at universities, central banks, and corporations around the world. The current release, Version 7.3, is easier to use than ever while continuing to offer the most advanced tools available for cutting-edge econometrics research.

Econometrics and Data Management

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.

Point-and-Click Wizards

The editor also offers more than twenty 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.

Graphics

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

Programming Capabilities

The command-driven language at the heart of the program remains easy. Extensive programming capabilities allow for handling much more defined procedures and functions, looping and program control instruct defined menus and dialog boxes. This allows for the development of specific menu- and dialog-driven end-user applications.

All versions of RATS also offer "batch mode" operation. Batch jobs can be run by dragging and dropping files or by double-clicking on a desktop icon.

RATS Discussion Forum and Email List

The web-based RATS Software Forum and the RATS Internet Mailing List (RATS-L) are both useful venues for RATS users to exchange ideas, solve programming problems, discuss econometrics topics, and more. The support staff at Estima are active participants in both forums, frequently posting example code and procedures on the forums before they appear anywhere else. See the RATS Discussion Forums page for more information.

Related Software: CATS