FRONTIER Version 4.1
The computer program
FRONTIER Version 4.1
was written by
Tim Coelli
who is professor at the
Centre for Efficiency and Productivity Analysis (CEPA).
Modified version
Arne Henningsen
has slightly modified this computer program:
- The user can specify the instruction file by an (optional)
argument at the command line now.
If the user adds the name of the instruction file after the command
to run FRONTIER 4.1, the program does not interact with the user,
but uses the instruction file specified in the call.
Hence, this modified version of FRONTIER 4.1 can be
run automatically (non-interactively).
- The source code can be compiled with the free
GNU Fortran compiler (gfortran) now.
- The version number reported by FRONTIER has been changed
from 4.1c to 4.1d.
Download
This modified version is available for download from here
(with permission of
Tim Coelli):
* The binaries have been compiled with
gfortran
using the options "-static" for static linking
(no dynamic linking with the shared libraries)
and "-O2" for using optimization level 2.
Using this modified version of FRONTIER 4.1 with
R
- Instruction files, data files, and start-up files for FRONTIER 4.1
can be conveniently created by the function
"front41WriteInput" from the
R package
frontier
(available also on
CRAN)
- Then, the modified version of FRONTIER 4.1
can be called from within
R
using the "system" command
(see example in documentation of "front41WriteInput").
- Finally, the output file from FRONTIER 4.1
can be read by the function
"front41ReadOutput" from the
R package
frontier
(available also on
CRAN).
This simplifies further calculations based the estimation results.
- However, it is probably more convenient to use the function
"frontier" from the
R package
frontier
that estimates a Stochastic Frontier Model with a single command
by internally using the FRONTIER 4.1 software.
Last Update: 10 January 2009