Applied Econometrics with R (Use R!)

R is a language and environment for data analysis and graphics. It may be considered an implementation of S, an award-winning language initially - veloped at Bell Laboratories since the late 1970s. The R project was initiated by Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in the early 1990s, and has been developed by an international team since mid-1997. Historically, econometricians have favored other computing environments, some of which have fallen by the wayside, and also a variety of packages with canned routines. We believe that R has great potential in econometrics, both for research and for teaching. There are at least three reasons for this: (1) R is mostly platform independent and runs on Microsoft Windows, the Mac family of operating systems, and various ?avors of Unix/Linux, and also on some more exotic platforms. (2) R is free software that can be downloaded and installed at no cost from a family of mirror sites around the globe, the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN); hence students can easily install it on their own machines. (3) R is open-source software, so that the full source code is available and can be inspected to understand what it really does, learn from it, and modify and extend it. We also like to think that platform independence and the open-source philosophy make R an ideal environment for reproducible econometric research.

This is the first book on applied econometrics using the R system for statistical computing and graphics. It presents hands-on examples for a wide range of econometric models, from classical linear regression models for cross-section, time series or panel data and the common non-linear models of microeconometrics such as logit, probit and tobit models, to recent semiparametric extensions. In addition, it provides a chapter on programming, including simulations, optimization, and an introduction to R tools enabling reproducible econometric research.

An R package accompanying this book, AER, is available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) at http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=AER.

It contains some 100 data sets taken from a wide variety of sources, the full source code for all examples used in the text plus further worked examples, e.g., from popular textbooks. The data sets are suitable for illustrating, among other things, the fitting of wage equations, growth regressions, hedonic regressions, dynamic regressions and time series models as well as models of labor force participation or the demand for health care.

The goal of this book is to provide a guide to R for users with a background in economics or the social sciences. Readers are assumed to have a background in basic statistics and econometrics at the undergraduate level. A large number of examples should make the book of interest to graduate students, researchers and practitioners alike.

Christian Kleiber is Professor of Econometrics and Statistics at Universität Basel, Switzerland. Achim Zeileis is Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Statistics and Mathematics at Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Austria. R users since version 0.64.0, they have been collaborating on econometric methodology in R, including several R packages, for the past eight years.