R Observatory: Metrics for metafrontier version 0.3.1

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

metafrontier

0.3.1Package record

Analysis of Metafrontier Models for Efficiency and Productivity

0packages depend

2.1Kdownloads / year

80.5%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Erik EnstadCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Issues ↗

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.

Changes in 0.3.1

Bug fixes

BC88/BC92 efficiencies are now evaluated on the log scale (pnorm(log.p = TRUE)), with an asymptotic closed form in the far left tail of the conditional distribution. The previous natural-scale ratio Phi(mu*/sigma* - sigma*) / Phi(mu*/sigma*) could return 0, Inf, or values above one on platforms without extended-precision long doubles (the CRAN noLD additional check) when both Phi terms were subnormal, which occurred in degenerate fits with sigma_u near zero. On standard platforms results are unchanged to near machine precision; in the affected tail region the new evaluation is also more accurate than the previous fallback to the JLMS value.

From NEWS.md in the release

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. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

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). We list this channel from recorded autoCRAN download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 4.4 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK13 OK2026-06-08
WARNING12 OK, 1 WARNING2026-06-07
OK8 OK2026-04-22

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 0.3.1

READMEYes · 547 wordsVignettesYes · 3 · dynamicNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 0.3.1Citation fileYes · software entry onlyWebsitenot declared in DESCRIPTION

Help pages: 24 (1 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 74%17 run in a plain check · 6 only when donttest examples are enabled (R CMD check --as-cran)
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 17%

Vignettes (3)

How these are measured

Downloads

2.1K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #15,102 · ~6/day · ~175/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

27930 days

79890 days

2.1K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on53 r2u1 autocran

How downloads are counted

Repository

iik1/metafrontier ↗Account: iik1

1Stars

0Forks

0Open issues

0Open PRs

2Releases

32Commits

1Commit identities

32 commits · Last activity 2026-09-24 · 0% stars, 30d · Default branch at 0.3.1.9000, ahead of CRAN 0.3.1 (checked 2026-10-18)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 75%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: not measured
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

Stars over time

2026-07-07 · 02026-07-31 · 1

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/iik1/metafrontier on 2026-10-18.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and on R-devel

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v3 (2026-09-26)

AI coding toolsBeta

This repository shows signs of AI coding tools.

Claude Codefirst seen 2026-04-10
Pull request it wrote: opened by a project member
Commits: at least 22 crediting it in the message

Models named in its commits

Claude Opus 4.621 commits · Apr 2026
Claude Opus 5.51 commit · Sep 2026

Counts are commits, not lines of code. Commits by a tool's accounts count once across all of its accounts. Commits crediting it are the largest count among its credit lines, a minimum.How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (updated 2026-09-27)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

12 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing metafrontier adds 3 packages (1 with compiled code, 599 KB of source tarballs). Heaviest: lpSolveAPI 479 KB, numDeriv 74 KB, Formula 46 KB.

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.

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (1)

Erik Enstad

Author, Maintainer since 0.2.2 (2026)

Releases (3)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

0.3.1Latest
record
2026-07-15 · current release · diff ↗
0.3.0
record
2026-07-15 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
check_convergence
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
0.2.2
record
2026-04-21
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11

Package metadata

First published: 2026-04-21
Total releases: 3 / 1 yrs
License: GPL (>= 3) OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 4.0.0
Download size: 206 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' entry:

citation("metafrontier")

The package provides a citation file, so citation() returns the authors' own entry.

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 0.3.1 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-21. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-21, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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