Using gretl for Principles of Econometrics, 3rd Edition Version 1.313 1 Lee C. Adkins Professor of Economics Oklahoma State University November 5, 2010 1 Visit http://www.LearnEconometrics.com/gretl.html for the latest version of this book. Also, check the errata (page 286) for changes since the last update. License Using gretl for Principles of Econometrics, 3rd edition. Copyright c  2007 Lee C. Adkins. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation (see Appendix F for details). i Preface This manual is about using the software package called gretl to do various econometric tasks required in a typical two course undergraduate or masters level econometrics sequence. It is written specifically to be used with Principles of Econometrics, 3rd edition by Hill, Griffiths, and Lim, although it could be used with many other introductory texts. The data for all of the examples used herein are available as a package from my website at http://www.learneconometrics.com/ gretl.html. If you are unfamiliar with gretl and are interested in using it in class, Mixon Jr. and Smith [2006] have written a brief review of gretl and how it can be used in an undergraduate course that you may persuade you to give it a try. The chapters are arranged in the order that they appear in Principles of Econometrics. Each chapter contains a brief description of the basic models to be estimated and then gives you the specific instructions or gretl code to reproduce all of the examples in the book. Where appropriate, I’ve added a bit of pedagogical material that complements what you’ll find in the text. I’ve tried to keep this to a minimum since this is not supposed to serve as a substitute for your text book. The best part about this manual is that it, like gretl, is free. It is being distributed in Adobe’s pdf format and I will make corrections to the text as I find errors. To estimate a few of the models in POE I’ve had to resort to another free software called R. As gretl develops I suspect that this small reliance on R will diminish. In any event, gretl contains a utility that makes using R quite easy. You’ll find an appendix in this book that will get you started. Gretl also gives users an ability to write his or her own functions, which greatly expands the usefulness of the application. In Chapters 14 and 16 functions are used to estimate a few of the models contained in POE. What’s more, functions can be shared and imported easily through gretl, especially if you are connected to the internet. If gretl doesn’t do what you want it to now, stay tuned. It soon may. If recent activity is any indication, I am confident that the the gretl team will continue to improve this already very useful application. I hope that this manual is similarly useful to those using Principles of Econometrics. I want to thank the gretl team of Allin Cottrell and Riccardo “Jack” Lucchetti for putting so ii much effort into gretl. It is a wonderful program for teaching and doing econometrics. It has many capabilities beyond the ones I discuss in this book and other functions are added regularly. Also, Jack has kindly provided me with suggestions and programs that have made this much better than it would have been otherwise. Any remaining errors are mine alone. Finally, I want to thank my good friend and colleague Carter Hill for suggesting I write this and Oklahoma State University for continuing to pay me while I work on it. Copyright c  2007, 2008, 2009 Lee C. Adkins. iii Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 What is Gretl? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1.1 Installing Gretl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.1.2 Gretl Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.1.3 Common Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.2 Importing Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.3 Using the gretl Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.3.1 Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.3.2 Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 1.3.3 Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2 Simple Linear Regression 15 2.1 Simple Linear Regression Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.2 Retrieve the Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.3 Graph the Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.4 Estimate the Food Expenditure Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 iv 2.4.1 Elasticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.4.2 Prediction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.4.3 Estimating Variance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 2.5 Repeated Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.6 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3 Interval Estimation and Hypothesis Testing 34 3.1 Confidence Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.2 Monte Carlo Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 3.3 Hypothesis Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 3.4 Script for t-values and p-values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3.5 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 4 Prediction, Goodness-of-Fit, and Modeling Issues 46 4.1 Prediction in the Food Expenditure Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 4.2 Coefficient of Determination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 4.3 Reporting Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 4.4 Functional Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 4.5 Testing for Normality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.6 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 4.6.1 Wheat Yield Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 4.6.2 Growth Model Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 4.6.3 Wage Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 4.6.4 Predictions in the Log-linear Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 v 4.6.5 Generalized R 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4.6.6 Prediction Interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 4.7 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 5 Multiple Regression Model 64 5.1 Linear Regression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 5.2 Big Andy’s Burger Barn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 5.2.1 SSE, R 2 and Other Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 5.2.2 Covariance Matrix and Confidence Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 5.2.3 t-Tests, Critical Values, and P-values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 5.3 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 6 Further Inference in the Multiple Regression Model 72 6.1 F-test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 6.2 Regression Significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 6.3 Extended Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.3.1 Is Advertising Significant? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.3.2 Optimal Level of Advertising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 6.4 Nonsample Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 6.5 Model Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 6.6 RESET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 6.7 Cars Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 6.8 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 7 Nonlinear Relationships 91 vi 7.1 Polynomials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 7.2 Interaction Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 7.3 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 7.3.1 Housing Price Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 7.3.2 CPS Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 7.3.3 Chow Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 7.3.4 Pizza Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 7.3.5 Log-Linear Wages Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 7.4 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 8 Heteroskedasticity 104 8.1 Food Expenditure Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 8.2 Weighted Least Squares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 8.3 Skedasticity Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 8.4 Grouped Heteroskedasticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 8.4.1 Wage Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 8.4.2 Food Expenditure Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 8.5 Other Tests for Heteroskedasticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 8.6 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 9 Dynamic Models and Autocorrelation 120 9.1 Area Response Model for Sugar Cane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 9.1.1 Bandwidth and Kernel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 9.1.2 Dataset Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 vii 9.1.3 HAC Standard Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 9.2 Nonlinear Least Squares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 9.3 Testing for Autocorrelation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 9.4 Autoregressive Models and Forecasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 9.4.1 Using the Dialogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 9.4.2 Using a Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 9.5 Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 9.6 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 10 Random Regressors and Moment Based Estimation 141 10.1 Basic Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 10.2 IV Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 10.3 Specification Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 10.3.1 Hausman Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 10.3.2 Testing for Weak Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 10.3.3 Sargan Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 10.4 Wages Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 10.5 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 11 Simultaneous Equations Models 154 11.1 Truffle Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 11.2 The Reduced Form Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 11.3 The Structural Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 11.4 Fulton Fish Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 viii 11.5 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 12 Analyzing Time Series Data and Cointegration 161 12.1 Series Plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 12.2 Tests for Stationarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 12.3 Spurious Regressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 12.4 Cointegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 12.5 The Analysis Using a Gretl Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 12.6 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 13 Vector Error Correction and Vector Autoregressive Models: Introduction to Macroeconometrics 178 13.1 Vector Error Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 13.1.1 Series Plots–constant and trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 13.1.2 Selecting Lag Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 13.1.3 Cointegration Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 13.1.4 VECM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 13.2 Vector Autoregression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 13.3 Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 14 Time-Varying Volatility and ARCH Models: Introduction to Financial Econo- metrics 195 14.1 ARCH and GARCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 14.2 Testing for ARCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 14.3 Simple Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 14.4 Threshold ARCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 ix [...]... file for the computer platform you are using For Microsoft Windows users the appropriate site is http:/ /gretl. sourceforge.net/win32/ One of the nice things about gretl is that Macintosh and Linux versions are also available If you are using some other computer system, you can obtain the source code and compile it on whatever platform you’d like This is not something you can do with any commercial software... getting it into a format that can be used by your software can be challenging There are dozens of different pieces of software and many use proprietary data formats that make transferring data between applications difficult You’ll notice that the authors of your book have provided data in several formats for your convenience In this chapter, we will explore some of the data handling features of gretl and show... and/or modify gretl under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation Gretl comes with many sample data files and a database of US macroeconomic time series From the gretl web site, you have access to more sample data sets from many of the leading textbooks in econometrics, including ours Principles of Econometrics by Hill et al [2007] Gretl can be used... software package that I’ve seen Gretl depends on some other (free) programs to perform some of its magic If you install gretl on your Mac or Windows based machine using the appropriate executable file provided on gretl s download page then everything you need to make gretl work should be installed as part of the package If, on the other hand, you are going to build your own gretl using the source files, you... version of gretl Windows registry couldn’t be opened: this is a good thing so don’t be alarmed If you are in fact using the Windows operating system, then you probably won’t be using gretl from the command line anyway This version of the program is probably the most useful for Linux users wishing to run gretl from a terminal window We won’t be using it in this manual A better way to execute single gretl. .. the gretl console In normal practice, the console is a lot easier to use than the gretlcli It offers some editing features and 3 immediate access to other ways of using gretl that aren’t available in the straight command line version of the program The console and its use is discussed in section 1.3.1 If you want to execute a series of commands, you do this using scripts One of the great things about gretl. .. to gretl s powerful language 1.1 What is Gretl? Gretl is an acronym for Gnu Regression, Econometrics and Time-series Library It is a software package for doing econometrics that is easy to use and reasonably powerful Gretl is distributed as free software that can be downloaded from http:/ /gretl. sourceforge.net and installed on your personal computer Unlike software sold by commercial vendors (SAS,... based on the examples from Principles of Econometrics, 3rd edition (POE ) by Hill et al [2007], you should also download and install the accompanying data files that go with this book The file is available at http://www.learneconometrics.com /gretl/ poesetup.exe This is a self-extracting windows file that will install the POE data sets onto the c:\Program Files \gretl\ data directory of your computer’s harddrive... number of figures (an excessive number to be sure) These figures are screen captures of gretl s windows as they appear when summoned from the pull-down menus As you become familiar with gretl the frequency of these figures will diminish and I will direct you to the proper commands that can be executed in the console or as a script using words only More complex series of commands may require you to use the gretl. .. logit, probit, tobit and a number of time series estimators Gretl uses a separate Gnu program called gnuplot to generate graphs and is capable of generating output in LaTeX format As of this writing gretl is under development so you can probably expect some bugs, but in my experience it is pretty stable to use with my Windows XP systems 1 1.1.1 Installing Gretl To install gretl on your system, you will . Using gretl for Principles of Econometrics, 3rd Edition Version 1.313 1 Lee C. Adkins Professor of Economics Oklahoma State. http://www.LearnEconometrics.com /gretl. html for the latest version of this book. Also, check the errata (page 286) for changes since the last update. License Using gretl for Principles