Postby EViews Gareth » Tue Nov 11, 2008 4:53 pm
Obviously I'm a little biased, but I think I can give you my thoughts....
I would agree with your classmates that Stata has, without doubt, more features for panel data analysis than EViews does. However EViews has a great many panel data features. If EViews does the panel data analysis that you need, and you are comfortable using EViews, then I, personally, would not see the point in switching. I believe that EViews is a more convenient platform to use than Stata in general (although my familiarity with EView is obviously many times greater than my familiarity with Stata), thus the panel data analysis that we do do you may find easier to work with.
I'm not sure I follow their argument on compatibility - EViews, I think, supports more file formats than Stata does.
Of course given that EViews is able to both read and write Stata files, there is nothing to stop you from using EViews for the majority of your work, then if you find there is something that EViews does not do that Stata does, you can always save the file in a Stata format and then try to do it in Stata.
It is probably worth asking your classmates if they have used EViews post-EViews 4. EViews 5 is really the version that introduced Panel Data analysis to EViews (prior to 5 there was only Pool estimation). EViews 5 also made it much easier to get data into and out of EViews (thus making it more compatible). It may be that your classmates comments are based upon EViews 4, in which case they are probably a lot more valid. Perhaps you should suggest to your classmates that they switch to using EViews 5 over Stata! :D
i recently joined this forum... I have Eviews 5 and i am so comfortable working with Eviews. 
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