R Observatory: Metrics for metafrontier version 0.3.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

CRAN requires the check problems on this package to be fixed before 2026-08-21 or it will be archived.

metafrontier

0.3.0

Analysis of Metafrontier Models for Efficiency and Productivity

0packages depend

1.4Kdownloads / year

80.4%test coverage

13/13checks pass

Overview

About

Maintained by Erik EnstadFirst published 2026-04-212 releasesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗

Implements metafrontier production function models for estimating technical efficiencies and technology gaps for groups of firms that face different restrictions of a common underlying metatechnology (group-specific technologies in the sense of Battese, Rao, and O'Donnell, 2004). Supports both stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) based metafrontiers. Includes the deterministic metafrontier of Battese, Rao, and O'Donnell (2004) doi:10.1023/B:PROD.0000012454.06094.29, the stochastic metafrontier of Huang, Huang, and Liu (2014) doi:10.1007/s11123-014-0402-2, and the metafrontier Malmquist productivity index of O'Donnell, Rao, and Battese (2008) doi:10.1007/s00181-007-0119-4. The deterministic metafrontier can be identified by either the minimum sum of absolute deviations (LP) or the minimum sum of squared deviations (QP) criterion. Additional features include panel SFA with time-varying inefficiency, bootstrap confidence intervals for technology gap ratios, a DEA poolability permutation test, latent class metafrontier estimation via the EM algorithm, Murphy-Topel corrected standard errors, convergence diagnostics, import of pre-fitted models from external estimation engines ('sfaR', 'frontier', 'Benchmarking'), and 'ggplot2' visualisation methods.

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("metafrontier", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("iik1/metafrontier")

Development version from iik1/metafrontier. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-metafrontier

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-metafrontier

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-metafrontier

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed).

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

Slowest check: 5.4 min · r-release-macos-x86_64

Code health

Yes

Tests · ratio 0.54

80.4%

Coverage · measured lines

100%

Documentation · exports

7

Dependencies · direct

Check history

OK2026-08-05
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
NOTE2026-08-01
12 OK · 1 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-06-08
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
WARNING2026-06-07
12 OK · 0 NOTE · 1 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-04-22
8 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Documentation

READMEYes · 547 wordsVignettesYes · dynamicpkgdown siteNoNEWSYes · 100% structuredCode of conductNoContributing guideNo

Examples that run: 74%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 100%
References docs: 17%

Downloads

1.4K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #9,991 · ~4/day · ~119/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

17030 days

97590 days

1.4K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on33 r2u16 autocran

Repository

GitHub ↗ iik1/metafrontier

1Stars

0Forks

0Open issues

0Open PRs

1Releases

27Commits

1Contributors

27 commits · Last activity 2026-08-10

Stars over time

2026-07-07 · 02026-07-31 · 1

Repository practices

Upstream repositoryBeta

2 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 2 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/iik1/metafrontier on 2026-08-09.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v1 (2026-07-18)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

12 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (1)

R >= 4.0.0

Imports (7)

statsgraphicsgrDevicesFormula numDeriv lpSolveAPImethods

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (10)

testthat knitr rmarkdown sfaR frontier Benchmarking quadprog plm ggplot2parallel

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Nothing depends on this yet.

Code & Tests

People & History

People (1)

Maintainer (1)

Erik Enstad

Author, Maintainer

Authors (1)

Erik Enstad

Author, Maintainer

Package Timeline

2 releases. Pick two to compare their code metrics. R releases are shown for context.

0.3.0Latest
2026-07-15 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
0.2.2
2026-04-21
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11

Package metadata

First published: 2026-04-21
Total releases: 2 / 1 yrs
License: GPL (>= 3) OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 4.0.0
Download size: not tracked yet
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("metafrontier")

Format

Enstad, E. (2026). metafrontier: Analysis of Metafrontier Models for Efficiency and Productivity (Version 0.3.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.metafrontier

This is what citation() produces when a package has no citation file of its own. If it prints something else, use that.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for metafrontier version 0.3.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-08-15. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-08-15, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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