R and RStudio

R is a language for statistical computing and graphics. R's use in the data science and econometrics community has taken off over recent years and (at a bare minimum) should be considered as an open source replacement to Stata.

Installing R

Go to the R homepage and download the installer for your operating system.

The current version of R is 3.4

Installing RStudio

RStudio provides an easy to work with interface to R, and its format should feel familiar to Stata and Matlab users.

Download and install RStudio for your operating system from here.

Verifying your Install of R

Open a terminal and enter:

R --version

followed by pressing Return.

The expected output begins with:

R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30) -- "Single Candle"
Copyright (C) 2017 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing

Windows PATH Setting redux

If you want R available from the command line (it is by default for Mac and Linux), we again need to update our PATH settings.

Right-click on Computer. Then go to "Properties" and select the tab "Advanced System settings". Choose "Environment Variables" and select Path from the list of system variables.

Choose Edit.

Windows 7 and 8 machines: If you accepted all defaults during your installation, and didn't have any other non-default setting prior to starting this guide, copy and paste the following string without spaces at the start or end:

    ;C:\Program Files\R\R-3.4.1\bin

Windows 10 machines: Click New and paste the following string:

    C:\Program Files\R\R-3.4.1\bin

Click on OK as often as needed.

After you have done this, open a new terminal and try and verify your install.

Installing Additional R Packages

We will need some additional libraries to conduct our statistical analysis. Proceed as follows:

  • Open RStudio
  • In the console, copy and paste the following:
uzh_progecon <- c(  "reshape", "rmarkdown",
                    "plm", "Hmisc", "sandwich",
                    "Ecdat", "stargazer", "knitr",
                    "httr", "rvest", "xml2",
                    "xtable","tidyverse", "AER",
                    "rdd", "car", "aod", "lmtest",
                    "lfe", "nlme", "lme4",
                    "erer", "margins",
                    "multiwayvcov", "RSQLite", "dbplyr")

install.packages(uzh_progecon)
  • Wait until all the packages have been installed and the you are done.
    • It may take a while, so be patient