This section of the website provides access to a variety of resources for users of our RATS and CATS software to help you better use our products. Use the menu above or the links below to access information on downloading procedures and example programs, obtaining Technical Support services, accessing the RATS discussion forum and more.
The Procedures and Examples Page provides access to over a thousand existing RATS procedures and example programs you can download for your own use. Note that if you have a current copy of the program, most of these will already be loaded onto your computer, but the web-based browser may make it easier to find an example for a particular technique.
Our web-based RATS Software Forum is a useful venue for RATS users to exchange ideas, solve programming problems, discuss econometrics topics, and more. The support staff at Estima are active participants, frequently posting example code and procedures on the forums before they appear anywhere else.
See the RATS Discussion Forums page for more information.
See Support for details on obtaining technical support.
If you haven't already done so, please read our Technical Support Policy before contacting us for assistance. It offers some suggestions on resolving problems, and describes the level of support we try to provide.
If you need greater detail on how to use RATS for a particular topic (such as Vector Autoregressions or State-Space Models), we offer web or e-mail based courses. See Courses and Seminars for our current offerings.
We periodically publish a newsletter (called The RATSLetter) which describes updates to the software, resources available to users and tips both on econometric practice and the use of RATS. You can download PDF copies using the link shown.
We occasionally post patch files that allow licensed RATS users to download updates to more recent versions at no charge. See Software Updates for details.
If you are experiencing a problem with RATS, you may want to check the List of Known Bugs to see if it is something we know about and have fixed. Others may want to look over this list to see if any known problems might affect your work.
Also, see the list of RATS Manual Errata for corrections to the RATS documentation.