Empirical Finance in R: An Introduction

Abstract

This article provides an introduction to the R statistical programming language with teaching applications in finance. R
is a statistical software environment for data analysis and graphics. Specific applications presented in this study include the
calculation of descriptive statistics for financial returns of 2 stocks and the S&P 500 Index. The R language is useful in
today’s finance classrooms because of its open-source coding environment, ease of learning, and high number of financial
data analysis packages contributed by users worldwide.