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An essential step in an econometric analysis is a comprehensive investigation of the properties of your time series. Fortunately, the Econometrics Toolbox comes with a bundle of tools that provide standard econometrics routines that are necessary for a proper analysis of your data.

Maybe the best approach to introduce you with the Econometrics Toolbox data analysis capabilities is working with an example. In this section, we are going to analyze the following time series:

	A	B	C
1	Sample time series
2
3	Time	Value
4	2010-01-31	145
5	2010-02-28	150
6	2010-03-31	178
7	2010-04-30	163
8	2010-05-31	172
9	2010-06-30	178
10	2010-07-31	199
11	2010-08-31	199
12	2010-09-30	184
13	2010-10-31	162
14	2010-11-30	146
15	2010-12-31	166
16	2011-01-31	171
17	2011-02-28	180
18	2011-03-31	193
19	2011-04-30	181
20	2011-05-31	183
21	2011-06-30	218
22	2011-07-31	230
23	2011-08-31	242
24	2011-09-30	209
25	2011-10-31	191
26	2011-11-30	172
27	2011-12-31	194
28	2012-01-31	196
29	2012-02-29	196
30	2012-03-31	236
31	2012-04-30	235
32	2012-05-31	229
33	2012-06-30	243
34	2012-07-31	264
35	2012-08-31	272
36	2012-09-30	237
37	2012-10-31	211
38	2012-11-30	180
39	2012-12-31	201
40	2013-01-31	204
41	2013-02-28	188
42	2013-03-31	235
43	2013-04-30	227
44	2013-05-31	234
45	2013-06-30	264
46	2013-07-31	302
47	2013-08-31	293
48	2013-09-30	259
49	2013-10-31	229
50	2013-11-30	203
51	2013-12-31	229
52	2014-01-31	242
53	2014-02-28	233
54	2014-03-31	267
55	2014-04-30	269
56	2014-05-31	270
57	2014-06-30	315
58	2014-07-31	364
59	2014-08-31	347
60	2014-09-30	312
61	2014-10-31	274
62	2014-11-30	237
63	2014-12-31	278
64	2015-01-31	284
65	2015-02-28	277
66	2015-03-31	317
67	2015-04-30	313
68	2015-05-31	318
69	2015-06-30	374
70	2015-07-31	413
71	2015-08-31	405
72	2015-09-30	355
73	2015-10-31	306
74	2015-11-30	271
75	2015-12-31	306

To analyze this series, go the Econometrics Toolbox tab, select any cell within the series range and then click on the green arrow in the command window.

And that is it! Now you can check the following analysis of your data:

A series line chart (double click the chart to expand it):

A density plot:

The autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation chart:

A box plot to check seasonality:

Note: The default seasonality is set to 12. To adjust this, just right click your data and type the seasonal length that you wish. You can also define which series your series begin (for instance, if you are investigating seasons in months and your series begin in March, type 3 in the “first value season” field.

The summary statistics of your series:

You can go further in your analysis, analyzing any transformations of your data. Besides, if you are doing a regression analysis, you will have all the analysis mentioned above for the dependent variable (i.e., the series itself), the predicted series and the residuals.

You can also investigate just some portion of your series, using the “data input” selection tool. Subsetting your data is made by changing the sliders thumbs (or changing the text input values) to use only the fraction of your data that you wish. In addition, to check the effective range that will be used in the analysis, just click on the “Preview series” button located in the command window.

The Econometrics Toolbox also deals well with missing values in your series. Some valid characters to represent missing values is “*” and “NA”. Please, pay attention that an empty cell is NOT a valid missing value. The standard internal procedure is to exclude the entire row containing a missing data from analysis or to ignore the missing values when it is not used for any calculus, for instance, to plot the time series. In the latter case, SAFE TOOLBOXES^® will not plot anything in the index of series where there is no value.