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Miscellaneous

userfile

A string with the name of a file that contains your values for some or all of yourcast()'s arguments. This file contains R code that changes default values of arguments. Default: NULL, E.g., the file might contain:

 
    index.code <- 30
    data <- "WHOmortalityData"

If an option is specified in userfile, it takes precidence over command line options, so its normally best to specify each option in either the userfile or the command line but not both.

nsample

A scalar; represents the number of iterations in the Gibbs algorithm ``BAYES''. Default: 500.

svdtol

A scalar; the tolerance used in inverting a matrix by SVD. Default is $10^{-10}$.

solve.tol

A real number smaller than $1$ that is used in the argument of the R-function ``solve'' to invert matrices (see description for tol). Default is $1.e-10$.

standardize

A boolean; should the covariates in each cross-sectional unit be standardized (to zero mean and standard deviation of $1$)? Standardization is performed for both the in- and out-of-sample periods. Default: TRUE.

LI.sigma.mean

A scalar; used in the likelihood and in the calculation of the priors in conjunction with Ha.sigma.sd, Hat.sigma.sd, Ht.sigma.sd, and Hct.sigma.sd. Default is 0.2.

LI.sigma.sd

A scalar; the standard deviation of LI.sigma.mean used in the calculation of the priors. Default is 0.1.

model.frame

If TRUE, include entire input dataobj in the output object. Default: FALSE.

savetmp

If TRUE, yourcast saves a file in the default directory (called yourcast.savetmp) with preliminary calculations. If the value of formula or dataobj are missing when yourcast is called, yourcast will get their values from this file, if it exists. This saves a minute or so of compute time for large data sets and is useful for multiple runs on the same data with different formulas specified or different prior values. If FALSE, no file is saved. (The structure of yourcast.savetmp is for the convenience of yourcast and is not intended to be read by the user or saved for more than one run.) Default: TRUE.