EViews: 10+ New Features Added to EViews 10

EViews 10+ is a free update to EViews 10, and introduces a number of new features, including:

Chow-Lin, Denton and Litterman frequency conversion with multiple indicator series.
Model dependency graphs.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data connectivity.
Introduction of the X-13 Force option for forcing annual totals.
Expansion of the EViews 10 snapshot system to program files.
A new help command.

All current EViews 10 users can receive the following new features. To update your copy of EViews 10, simply use the built in update feature (Help->EViews Update), or manually download the latest EViews 10 patch.

1) Chow-Lin, Denton and Litterman Frequency Conversion with Multiple Indicators

EViews’ Chow-Lin, Denton and Litterman frequency conversion methods have been expanded to allow multiple indicator series giving greater flexibility and accuracy when interpolating high frequency data.

The purpose of Chow-Lin interpolation is to use regression to combine higher-frequency series with a single lower-frequency series. The result is a new high-frequency series that is related to both. Previously, EViews allowed you to create a new series from a single higher-frequency series and a lower-frequency series; the update now allows you to relate multiple series to a lower-frequency series. This will be useful for people who want to use multiple inputs (for example, they believe that the combination of several series is better at prediction that a single series) in their interpolation.

See a complete list of Data Handling features added in EViews 10.

2) Model Dependency Graph

We’ve developed a new way to graphically view the relationship between variables in your model. Colour coding is used to depict the dynamics in the model, and you can zoom and highlight variables for even greater clarity.

Many central banks and large corporations around the world use EViews to build macroeconomic models, and the EViews model object is at the heart of the modelling experience inside EViews.

Whilst EViews has always provided a powerful interface for creating, editing and solving these models. However, it can be difficult for the modeller to explain his work to colleagues and clients. The new dependency graph provides a simple visual guide to how the relationships in the model are structured, allowing demonstration of the structure of the model.

We plan on improving and adding to the dependency graph feature over the next few releases. If you have any suggestions or requests for the graph (or any other aspect of EViews!) please contact us.

See a complete list of Testing and Diagnostics features added in EViews 10.

3) Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Data

EViews can now connect to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics’ API to natively fetch data directly from the BLS into EViews.

The US BLS is an important statistical agency, collecting and producing data on labor economics, including vital macroeconomic statistics such as prices (CPI), employment and unemployment, and salary data for both the United States in total, as well as regional aggregates.

The BLS data is also available in other database sources that EViews supports, such as FRED database. However, adding BLS as a direct data source allows for a quicker data retrieval.

See a complete list of Data Handling features added in EViews 10.

4) X-13 Force Option

EViews’ implementation of the U.S. Census Bureau’s X-13 seasonal adjustment package has been extended to give an interface to the Force specification of X-13, which allows you to seasonally adjust the data, forcing the annual totals to remain at the pre-adjusted levels.

Although use of the Force option was possible in previous versions of EViews, EViews 10+ provides a new interface to the option, making its use even easier.

Many economic time series have seasonal cycles; consumption or expenditures increase and decrease at certain times of the year. Most official statistics are seasonally adjusted to remove these cycles to allow analysis of the underlying trends in the data excluding the seasonality.

X-13 has become the de-facto standard method of seasonally adjusting monthly and quarterly time series data within the United States and many other countries, and many agencies use the Force option within X-13 as a method of ensuring the adjusted data lines up with the original raw data. The inclusion of this option to the EViews X-13 interface allows easy access to this popular feature.

See a complete list of Computation features added in EViews 10, including other seasonal adjustment routines.

5) Program Snapshots

EViews 10 introduced the popular workfile snapshot system, allowing both manual and automatic backup, archiving and management of workfiles. EViews 10+ expands this system to EViews program files. You can manually create a snapshot of your EViews program, or let EViews automatically create backups at specified time intervals. Once snapshots have been made you can compare the current version of your program with its snapshots, quickly viewing the differences between the two, and reverting to a previous state if required.

See a complete list of EViews Interface features added in EViews 10.

6) Help Command

A new help command has been implemented which provides a quick way to access the documentation for a specific command.