this message is to inform the community about the activity in our function package repository. During the month of July 2026, despite the heat, package developers were very busy: 1 new package was added and 4 more were updated. The updates are
"PTconf", by Sven Schreiber (Permanent-transitory decompositions in I(1) systems, with estimation uncertainty)and the new one is
"GFE", by A. Pionati, G. Valentini and myself (grouped fixed effects estimator for panel data)
Note that the "gqtest" package had been retired some time ago, but has now being reinstated after a request (and a few tweaks) by its author. Welcome back, Oleh.
The "GFE" package, instead, is an implementation of the estimator proposed in Bonhomme and Manresa (2015) "Grouped Patterns of Heterogeneity in Panel Data", Econometrica, which has now become quite popular. It should be noted that, to our knowledge, this is the first implementation for a free software package. So, if you want to set yourselves free from the yoke of proprietary code, here's your way out.
Download and enjoy!
-- ------------------------------------------------------- Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES) Università Politecnica delle Marche (formerly known as Università di Ancona) r.lucchetti@univpm.it http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti -------------------------------------------------------