EasyReg (Easy Regression) International (shortly EasyReg) conducts various econometric estimation and testing tasks on all 32 bit and 64 bit Windows platforms up to Windows 10, simply by clicking the mouse. EasyReg also works under Windows 8 and 10, but in that case you need to set the compatibility mode of EasyReg to Windows XP, and possibly run EasyReg as Administrator.
EasyReg was initially programmed in Visual Basic 3, then migrated to Visual Basic 5 (via Visual Basic 4), and has been further developed in Visual Basic 5 Enterprise Edition.
EasyReg is designed for use in empirical research (including my own), and for teaching econometrics. In the latter case the user can choose his or her own econometrics level.
EasyReg is called International because it accepts dots and/or commas as
decimal delimiters, regardless of the local number setting of Windows. Moreover, EasyReg works under
non-English versions of Windows as well without the need to adjust the language
setting of Windows, as long as the language involved uses a roman alphabet, for example German, Dutch, Spanish,
Portuguese, and French Windows versions.
However, if Windows uses a language with a non-Roman alphabet such as Japanese and Chinese, and the EasyReg
menus do not open automatically when you move the mouse pointer over them, the problem is likely due to the
language setting for non-Unicode programs (EasyReg is such a program). If so, click here
for detailed instructions on how to change the language setting for non-Unicode programs.
This will fix the problem without affecting the language of Windows itself.
Under Windows Vista and Windows 7 and 8 it is recommended to always check
the language for non-Unicode programs, because if it is set to a language without a Roman alphabet EasyReg
may seem to work but it will not be completely functional.
It has been verified that EasyReg also works well on Apple & Mac computers via
VirtualBox VM.
The same may apply to Linux computers as well, but that has not yet been verified.
Note that most EasyReg tasks require data. Therefore, when you start up EasyReg for the first
time, the menu items that require data are disabled. To learn how to import data in EasyReg,
consult the guided tours and the Help menu.
Previous versions of EasyReg have been favorably reviewed by
EasyReg is designed for my own use in research and teaching, as well as a service to the econom(etr)ics
community. If you have your own web page, and you like EasyReg, please put a link on your page to EasyReg, so that
Google
can list it.
Moreover, if you use EasyReg for research, please refer to it in the reference list of your paper as:
Note that this is a reference to the EasyReg program itself, and not to a paper or a manual. There is no
EasyReg manual, and there should be no need for a manual, because EasyReg comes with a variety of
guided tours which explain how to use EasyReg, and a help menu with
answers to common questions.
The present version of EasyReg may not be free of bugs. By using EasyReg you automatically agree to not holding me or the Pennsylvania State University liable for any damage caused by errors or viruses. As to the latter, all the EasyReg files have been scanned for possible viruses. If you encounter problems, please let me know.
EasyReg is completely free. It may be downloaded freely, without my written consent, on home computers, lap-tops and stand-alone computers and networks of non-commercial institutions and organizations as well as commercial institutions.
EasyReg is now open source. The Visual Basic 5.0 source code can be downloaded from the EasyReg download web page (see below).
EasyReg was originally designed to promote my own research. I came to realize that getting my research published in econometric journals is not enough to get it used. But writing a program that only does the Bierens' stuff would not reach the new generation of economists and econometricians. Therefore, the program should contain more than only my econometric techniques.
When I taught econometrics at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in the period 1991-1996, I needed software that my graduate students could use for their exercises. The existing commercial software was not advanced enough, or too expensive, or both. Therefore, I added the econometric techniques that I taught in class first to SimplReg, and later on to EasyReg after I had bought Visual Basic 3.
Meanwhile, working on EasyReg became a hobby: my favorite pastime during rainy weekends.
When I moved to Penn State University, and made EasyReg downloadable from the web, people from all over the world,
from developing countries in Asia and Africa as well as from western Europe and the USA, wrote me e-mails with
econometric questions, suggestions for additions, or just saying "thank you". For example, an EasyReg user from
Yemen e-mailed me:
Click here for more "thank you" notes.
It appears that many students and researchers have no access, or cannot afford access, to commercial econometrics
software. By making EasyReg commercial I would let these people down.
There are also less altruistic reasons for keeping EasyReg free:
EasyReg does most of the econometrics tasks available in competing commercial software, in particular:
EasyReg contains modules (accessible via "Menu" and its sub-menus) which conduct:
All the econometric tasks in the previous menu items can be conducted simply by point-and-click. The following
modules, however, allow you to program the functional form of the models involved. The programming itself is still
done by point-and-click, though.
Miscellaneous modules are modules based on my work in progress, in particular semi-nonparametric survival analysis.
The "File" menu has the following submenus:
EasyReg creates a sub-folder EASYREG.DAT, containing the random access data files INPUT1.RAN and INPUT2.RAN,
the output text file OUTPUT.TXT, picture files (*.BMP), and various auxiliary files (*.TMP), in the folder where
EasyReg has been started up. The auxiliary files (with extension TMP) are created during the EasyReg session and
deleted automatically when you quit. If you start up EasyReg in a folder already containing the sub-folder EASYREG.DAT,
you can continue the previous session. All output is stored and can be printed via Windows.
When you activate EasyReg, it will automatically move to the last folder in which you have activated EasyReg,
so that you may continue the previous EasyReg session.
This submenu has the following items:
This item opens a guided tour for first time EasyReg users, explaining step-by-step
how to import data in EasyReg.
This menu answers most of the questions which may arise when you start-up EasyReg
for the first time. This help menu item is also available online:
Back to top.
The Level menu enables you to set the econometrics level. EasyReg is designed to
be used in undergraduate, intermediate, and advanced econometrics courses, as well as for empirical economic research.
Therefore, the user can start-up the program at various levels, so that the topics and features that have not yet been
taught in class so far will be suppressed. If you use EasyReg for empirical economic research, choose the "Research level"
option, otherwise choose the appropriate "Student level" option. However, the "Student level" only applies during the
EasyReg session. The "Research level" is the default.
You cannot choose sub-levels.If you choose this option, then you choose all of the above.
The research level includes the advanced level, plus the approached in the following papers (See my
downloadable papers web page): The research level option is the default option when EasyReg is started up. The chosen student level is
applicable only during the current session, and can be changed during the session. EasyReg contains various Tools modules:
Demonstration of For a given matrix A, his module computes A', AA', A'A, A^2, trace(A),
A^-1, det(A) (the latter four if A is square), the eigenvalues and eigenvectors
of A if A is symmetric, diag(A) if A is a row or column vector, and for
conformable matrices A and B: A+B, A-B, and AB. This module allows you to plot a function of one or two variables from data on file.
The first item of the WWW menu states the conditions under
which EasyReg users may email me with questions and comments.
The next seven items give access (via the default web browser) to
The Tours
menu gives access (via the default web browser) to the available guided tours. These tours are in the form of
HTM files with associated JPG picture files, located in the EasyReg folder, provided that you have downloaded them.
See the EasyReg download web page for the available guided tours. They are also available
online.
Back to top.
All arrays in EasyReg are declared with variable dimensions. However, the number of observations is stored
in an integer variable, which in Visual Basic 5 is limited to a maximum value of 32767. Consequently, if you
try to import a data set with more than 32767 observations you will get an error message, and EasyReg will
crash. On the other hand, such large data sets are rare in empirical econometrics. Therefore, in practice the
amount of data that EasyReg can handle depends on the memory capacity of your computer.
In order to allocate the maximum amount of memory to the data, EasyReg is chopped up in separate EXE files
conducting specific tasks. The main program, EASYREG.EXE, is only a shell around these other EXE files, containing
the menus. The specific EXE files will not run stand-alone. The EasyReg EXE files are Multiple Document Interface
(MDI) programs with non-movable child forms. The control buttons of the child windows have been removed in order
to prevent the user from accidentally closing or reactivating a child window. The reasons for the latter are twofold:
Under full screen mode some of the control buttons of EasyReg may be covered by the taskbar. If so, open Control
Panel > Taskbar and Start Menu > Taskbar, and check Auto-hide.
EasyReg runs default in single user mode: In this mode it is not possible to activate more than
one instance of EasyReg. The reason is the following:
When you start-up EasyReg (in the default single user's mode), it creates a sub-folder TEMP
and a further sub-folder TEMP\REGISTR in the EasyReg system folder. The folder TEMP is used for storage
of the setting of EasyReg, such as the last position and size of the EasyReg main window, and the path of the
last folder where you have started up EasyReg. The registration information (in particular your name) is stored
in sub-folder REGISTR. Therefore, if it would be possible to run multiple instances of EasyReg, the files in
sub-folder TEMP, in particular the file STARTDIR which contains the path of the folder were the current
EASYREG.DAT sub-folder is located, will be messed up, so that neither instance of EasyReg will run correctly.
Moreover, if EasyReg is installed on a server, the EasyReg system folder is usually write protected, so that
EasyReg cannot create and/or write to the sub-folders TEMP and TEMP\REGISTR in the system folder.
If EasyReg is installed on a network server, it should be started-up by executing EASYREGN.EXE instead of EASYREG.EXE.
Program EASYREGN.EXE opens with the following window:
What does EasyReg do?
and even more. Some of the listed software have additional features, though. EasyReg is mainly a point-and-click program,
whereas some of the listed commercial software packages are programmable.
The EasyReg menus
Menu
Input
Output
Data analysis:
Single equation models:
Multiple equations models:
User-defined nonlinear models:
Miscellaneous modules:
File
Current data
EasyReg comes with its own database containing various data to play with. You may add variables from
the current data file to this database, delete variables from the database, or restore the database from backup.
The database files involved are EASYREG.DB1 and EASYREG.DB2, respectively, in the EasyReg folder, with
corresponding backup files ERDBBAK.DB1 and ERDBBAK.DB2. Only the latter two files are included on the setup disk.
If you run EasyReg for the first time, the backup files ERDBBAK.DB1 and ERDBBAK.DB2 are automatically copied
to EASYREG.DB1 and EASYREG.DB2, respectively. If you upgrade an older version of EasyReg, the latter is not done,
in order to prevent the existing database files from being overwritten. (The files EASYREG.DB1 and EASYREG.DB2 are
random access files. If you try to import these files in a text editor or wordprocessor, they will be damaged.)
If the current folder does not contain a sub-folder EASYREG.DAT, you can only view, restore, or backup
the database, but not retrieve variables from the database. For retrieving variables from the database,
see below.
Get data
How to get data
Help
Level
Novice student level
Intermediate student level
Advanced student level:
Research level
Tools
Teaching tools
Distribution tools
and the null distributions of the (Augmented) Dickey-Fuller and Phillips-Perron unit root tests. All
test statistics which have one of these (asymptotic) null distributions are automatically endowed with
(asymptotic) p-values.
Matrix tools
Plot a function
Microsoft Excel tools
Make an EasyReg stand-alone CD or USB drive
WWW
The last two items are the upgrade modules:
Tours
Online guided tours.
Some of these guided tours have been translated in French by Dr. Nasser Ary Tanimoune, University of Ottawa, Canada.
Data size limitations
Structure and appearance of EasyReg
The default size of EasyReg is 640x480 pixels. You can run EasyReg
in full screen mode by clicking the "maximize" control in the upper-right corner of the EasyReg main window. EasyReg
will then be maximized, and all the windows, controls, fonts and menus will be proportionally enlarged. This is quite
different from other Windows applications, which require reading glasses if you run them in a higher screen resolution
than 800 x 600 pixels. EasyReg will remember the last setting. If you close EasyReg while in full screen mode, it will start
in full screen mode the next time.
Running EasyReg from a network server
Single user mode
The network solution
In the Department of Economics at Penn State, EasyReg has been installed on server "godzilla" in folder EasyReg.
Each graduate economics student and economics faculty has his or her own folder on network drive H (which is actually
a virtual drive of another server). My folder is h:[HBierens] and I have stored
the settings of EasyReg in folder "h:[HBierens]\EasyReg Setting". This folder is used by EasyReg in the same way as the folder
TEMP in the single user mode. Therefore, in order to run the network version of EasyReg, I have to click drive H, double
click folder "EasyReg Setting", and then click the "Start EasyReg" button. If the folder involved does not yet exist,
you may type the path of the user's folder in the text box. EasyReg will then create this folder. It is not allowed to
store the EasyReg setting in the root folder
When you click "Start EasyReg", the path to this folder is passed on to EASYREG.EXE, and then EasyReg will run in almost the same way as in single user mode. The only exceptions are:
Before EasyReg can run from the network server, you have to initialize it.
Download EasyReg International and its Visual Basic 5.0 source code from the Penn State website.
Download EasyReg International from the EasyReg mirror
site in Brazil, maintained by Professor Claudio Shikida, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil.
Number and origins of registered EasyReg users. Effective March 28, 2011, the online
registration of EasyReg has been discontinued!
After you have downloaded EasyReg it is recommended that you check out regularly which bugs
have shown up so far and which new features have been added.
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