Business/Economics programs?

Throwing the question out there basically, to people who are businessmen, or work for financial firms - what software do you find useful and would recommend taking time to learn to an economics/mathematics student who is either going onto master's in financial mathematics or MBA.

Cheers.

 

Eviews is pretty much the software benchmark for applied time series econometrics.

So saying, unless you work as some sort of independent consultant, the firm you work for usually has their own preference for econometric software - so if you change jobs a few times, you can find yourself using Eviews at one place, SAS at another and STATA at another after that. Even programming type languages like Matlab come into play.

Makes the learning curve a pain since they're all pretty complicated in their own right.

Personally I find Eviews far and away the best package. It's simple to get a basic handle on, and from there you can go as complicated as your mind allows

 

Aha, excellent. Thanks for the response.

I did realize that many firms will have their own package preference, and thus to make myself a more versatile candidate I probably should have some grip on the leading programs in use.

So:
Eviews
SAS
Stata
Matlab
C++/VBA?

How crucial is proficiency in Excel/Access?
Is it fair to expect that the companies will primarily operate on Windows XP/Vista systems, or there is a good chance of dealing with Linux also?

 

I've never had the need for C++/VBA and can't actually think of many analysts that have - but I'm sure there's some!

Excel and Access are always good to know your way around, excel because it's sometimes easier to manipulate data with that (as strange as that might sound) and depending on the data storage system of the firm you're working for, at least some type of db familiarity would make life easier.

But if you want to be the best candidate - know your econometrics, a firm will hire the person with brilliant technical abilities and poor software experience over a candidate with an average ability and years of software experience, every time.

Eviews is used by most central banks around the world, it's a seriously credible package. A lot of universities/colleges etc run their time series courses using Eviews 5.1 SE - it usually comes with the textbook. I dont actually know why companies bother to use STATA and SAS for time series work, they're great packages, but time series arent really their forte.

On XP/Vista - I've never seen a firm that specialises in this type of work use anything but XP/Vista. I'm in Australia though - it might be different across the pond.