RATS Standard, Download

Overview

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. Our current release, Version 9.0, is easier to use than ever while continuing to offer the most advanced tools available for cutting-edge econometrics research.

We'll take a closer look at the RATS program below. For more details, see the List of Features page or click on any of the menu items at left

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.

(click on images to enlarge)

Point-and-Click Wizards

The editor also offers more than 40 menu-driven Wizards that provide point-and-click access to most common tasks, including reading data, displaying graphs, doing transformations, estimating a variety of 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 with 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.

Below: The ARCH/GARCH Wizard dialog box At Right: The Time Series Wizard menu

High-Quality Graphs

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 to learn and use for simple jobs, but its extensive programming capabilities also allow you to handle much more complex tasks. Features include user-definable procedures and functions, looping and program control instructions, and the ability to create user-defined menus and dialog boxes. With these capabilities, you can automate complex or repetitive tasks, and even write sophisticated menu- and dialog-driven end-user applications.

All versions of RATS also offer "batch mode" operation. You can run jobs several ways: from the command line; by dragging and dropping files; or by double-clicking on a desktop icon. This is especially helpful for users who need to run the same jobs on a regular basis.

Cross Platform Support

RATS is available for Windows, Macintosh, UNIX and Linux, with complete compatibility across platforms. You can share programs, data files, output, and graph files across any of these platforms with no translation required.