EViews Guide [1]

Running EViews from the CD and EViews Installation

1. System Requirements

 Intel 486 or Pentium processor computer

 Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0 with Service
Pack 3 or later
 8 MB of RAM (Windows 95 and Windows 98) or 16 MB of RAM
(Windows NT)
 10 MB of available hard drive space for installation
 CD-ROM drive
 Recommendations: 16 MB of RAM (Windows 95 and Windows 98) or 24
MB of RAM (Windows NT)

(Website: www.eviews.com\student)

2. Running EViews from the CD

 Insert the CD into your CD drive

 A Box will appear on the screen, headed “EViews Student Version CD-
ROM”
 Choose “Run”

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3. Installing EViews to your PC [But you still need to insert the CD into your
PC each time to start EViews!!!]

 Choose “Install EViews to Disck” in the “EViews Student Version CD-

ROM” box
 The next box headed “EViews Student Version Setup”
 Read the “Welcome” box. Then, Click on “Next”

 Now, read the “Software Licence Agreement”. Then, click “Yes”

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 Now, you are asked to choose a destination location for the EViews
software. The default drive and folder are “C:\EViews3s\”. You can
browse to another destination on your PC, if you wish. When you are
ready, click “Next”

 In the “Select Program Folder” box, you will probably want to select
the default Program Folder name. So click on “Next”

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 The EViews files should load, and on completion the “Setup
Complete” box will appear. Click on “Finish”. You have now
successfully installed EViews

 It is recommended that you place a shortcut to EViews on your screen.

(1) Go to the folder where the EViews is loaded. (2) Right-click
“EViewe3s.exe” and holding the mouse button down, drag the icon to
a suitable place on your screen.
 Once the short-cut icon has appeared on your screen, you may get into
EViews by double right-clicking on the icon.
 A reminder: the CD should be inserted in your PC each time to start
EViews!!!

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4. EViews Documents

 [Choose “View Online PDF Docs” in the “EViews Student Version CD-
ROM” box] OR [Choose “Docs” from “C:\EViews” (this is the default
destination of EViews) – see below]
 You are encouraged to print out EViews UGSV.pdf which is the Student
Version User’s Guide.
 “EViews UGSV.pdf” is the standard version user’s guide (638 pages!!!).

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 The Basics

1. Opening an Existed EViews Workfile

2. Saving and EViews Workfile
3. Examining Data
4. Descriptive Statistics
5. Creating New Variables
6. Quick/Estimate Equation
7. Interacting With Other Software
8. Creating a New Eviews File & Importing Data

[1] Opening an Existed EViews “Workfiles” (a:\eviews\wage1.wf1)

 Click on FILE/OPEN. Then Choose WORKFILE

 Change to the correct folder and highlight the desired file

(a:\ewviews\wage1.wf1) and click OPEN


Get the file (wage1.wf1) from the course website (or from the textbook website) and save it
under a:\eviews.

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EViews will open the requested file, and provide a list of variables and objects in
the file. The open box on the screen is called the workfile box.

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[2] Saving an EViews Workfile

To SAVE a file,

 Click on FILE - SAVE or FILE- SAVE AS to change the name of the file
 Alternatively, Click SAVE or SAVE AS on the toolbar on the workfile
box.

[3] Examining Data

Click on the name educ in the workfile window, and then press CTRL (from your
keyboard) and click on exper, female, married, and wage. All five variables
should be highlighted:

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Now place the cursor anywhere in the highlighted and double click the left mouse
button. Eviews will open a popup menu.

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Choose Open Group. EViews will create an untitled group object as a
spreadsheet of all five variables:

[4] Descriptive Statistics

You can select View/Descriptive Stats/Individual Samples (under the group

window) to compute descriptive statistics for each variable in the group:

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You’ll get

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If you try to close the group window, a “delete untitled group” box will popup.

If you would like to save the group for future use, click on “Name”

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Now, you may give the group a name or just use the default (GROUP01). Then,
click on OK. [“GROUP01” has been created – see that? Try clicking on it and see
what’ll happen.]

[5] Creating New Variables

Click the Genr button on the workfile toolbar. (Alternatively, Quick and
Choose Generate Series...)

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Enter the equation in the dialog box to describe the variable that you wish to
create. The Sample area allow the transformation to be applied to different
observations.

 Use a * for multiplication and a / for division

 Use ^ for raising to a power
 Use + and - for addition and subtraction.
 log( ) takes “natural logarithms” and exp( ) takes “exponentiation.”

For example, type exper2=exper^2 and click OK. Now, you create a new variable
named exper2. You may wish to examine the new variable (together with exper):

[6] Quick/Estimate Equation

Most EViews operations can be done several ways. Running EViews through the
quick menu seems to be the most popular one. The Quick menu looks like

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Estimate Equation is the one will be used often in 178.280:

Type lwage c educ exper exper2 in the Equation Specification box and click OK
and you’ll get (you’ll learn the details later)

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If you try to close the “Equation: UNTITLED” window a “delete untitled equation”
box will popup. You may give the equation a name (default: equation01) by
clicking on name and OK – this will save the equation for future use. (See eq01
has been created?)

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[7] Interacting with Other Software

Text information can be easily copied to other software. For example, to

copy regression results to a Word file, highlight the regression info, right-
choose EDIT then COPY

EViews gives options for the degree of precision for the information copied.

Now, start Word, and then EDIT and then choose PASTE

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Data can be exported to other software such as EXCEL. Choose:

 FILE then choose

 EXPORT and then choose
 Write Text-Lotus-Excel

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Navigate to the place you wish to store the file, and the pick file type, TXT, Wk1,
WK3, or XLS (recommended) file.

Type the variables you want to export to the EXCEL file in the “series to write”
box.

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The file can then be opened in EXCEL (a:wage.xls).

 Note that the first column in the excel file is “obs” (from 1 to 526). If you
don’t want this obs column to be created, you need to change the “Upper-
left cell” box (in the export window) from B2 (default) to A2.

[8] Create a New Eviews Workfile & Import Data

Create a New Eviews File: Choose File\New\Workfile

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Choose “Undated or irregular” and the sample size (n) in the End observation
box (in the wage.xls case, n=526 – the data will be imported to the new file later)
and click OK***

You’ll see the following next.

***
Note that for “cross-sectional data” (we pick undated). For time-series data, data frequency
will matter.

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Now, choose File/Import/Read Text-Excel-Lotus...

Navigate to the place you wish to import the data – say, a:wage.xls.

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Click Open and you’ll see:

Tips on importing data:

 Case 1: Suppose that the first column in the wage.xls is OBS and that the
first row is the name of each variable. You can either (i) type educ exper
exper2 wage in the “Names for series or Number of series if names in
file” box, or (ii) type 4 (meaning: 4 variables will be read in) in the same
box.

 Case 2: Suppose that there is no OBS column and that the first row is the
name of each variable. Change “Upper-left data cell” to be A2 and do the
same thing as in Case1.

 Case 3: Suppose that the first column in the wage.xls is OBS but there
are no names for the variables. You need to type educ exper exper2
wage in the “Names for series or Number of series if names in file” box
and change “Upper-left data cell” to be B1.

 Case 4: Suppose that there is no OBS column and there are no names
the variables. You need to type educ exper exper2 wage in the “Names
for series or Number of series if names in file” box and change “Upper-left
data cell” to be A1.

Note: you may also import data from a text file (say, wage1.txt) similarly.

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 EViews Guide [2]

Part A: Import Data

 Save the file ceosal1.xls (say, in drive A). (Read ceosal1.des to get an idea
about the dataset.)
 Import the file into EViews. (See EViews Guide [I])

1. File/New/Workfile.
2. (Workfile Range) Choose “Undated or Irregular” and type 1
(start observation) and 209 (end observation). Then, OK.
3. File/Import/Read Text-Lotus-Excel...
4. Open the target file (a:ceosal1.xls)
5. (See below) Type “10” in the “name for series or number of series
if names in file” box. Change B2 in the upper-left data cell to be
A2. Then, Click OK.

Now, you should see the following:

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  Ten new variables have been successfully loaded in.
 Click “Save” and save the workfile as, say, “a:ceosal1.wf1”.

Part B: Basic Practices

 Now, suppose you’d like to have a look at the data of salary. Move your
cursor to SALARY and right-click on it. Then, choose OK.

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You should have:

 Try View/Descriptive Statistics/Histogram and Stats and you’ll get

This will give you same idea about the data: most of them are between 500
and 2,000 (in thousands), the sample average is 1,281.120 (so, more than 1
million) and the standard deviation is 1372.345. You can also find the

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 maximum and minimum in the sample. Don’t worry about skewness,
kurtosis, and Jarque-Bera.

 Now, try Proc/Sort Series... Type “salary” in the “sort workfile series”
box and click OK. Now, you’ve sorted all the series in ceosal1.wf1 in
ascending order on the basis of values of salary. (Have another look at the
salary data!)

Remarks

1. Data re-ordering should cause no problems at all in cross-sectional

regressions. But, for time-series/panel data this is not the case.
2. Once the file has been re-ordered, it is difficult to change it back to the
original ordering. (You may generate obs=1,2,...,209 before sorting
the file using “obs=@trend+1” under Genr (see Guide I). You can
always change the file back to the original order by sorting it on the
basis of obs.)

Part C: Regression

 To get the results of Examples 2.3, 2.6 and 2.8, do the following

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[1] Click Quick/Estimate Equation...

[2] Type salary c roe in the equation specification box. (Don’t forget “c”
– the intercept!) Click OK. (You’ll learn what to do with “Options” later!
In 178220, all estimations are done using LS (least squares) methods.)

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 [3] Now, you’ll get:

 So far, all you need to know are: (1) Method: Least Squares (2)
Coefficients (estimated) (3) Standard (Std.) Error and (4) R2.
 You may save the estimation result (see Guide I).

 To do Example 2.11, you need to generate lsalary (log(salary)) and lsales

(log(sales)). And then, do the same quick/estimate equation.... (but, this
time type lsalary c lsales). You should get the following:

Dependent Variable: LSALARY

Method: Least Squares
Date: 08/06/04 Time: 11:46
Sample: 1 209
Included observations: 209
Variable Coefficient Std. Error t-Statistic Prob.
C 4.821996 0.288340 16.72332 0.0000
LSALES 0.256672 0.034517 7.436168 0.0000
R-squared 0.210817 Mean dependent var 6.950386
Adjusted R-squared 0.207005 S.D. dependent var 0.566374
S.E. of regression 0.504358 Akaike info criterion 1.478462
Sum squared resid 52.65600 Schwarz criterion 1.510446
Log likelihood -152.4992 F-statistic 55.29659
Durbin-Watson stat 1.859599 Prob(F-statistic) 0.000000

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