What is the Econometrics Laboratory (EML) at UC Berkeley?

The Econometrics Laboratory (EML) at eml.berkeley.edu is a computing facility at the University of California, Berkeley, dedicated to graduate-level instruction and to research by graduate students and faculty in the Department of Economics. It is a unit of the Institute of Business and Economic Research (IBER) and occupies space provided by the Department of Economics. If you are trying to determine whether EML is the right resource for your work, the deciding factor is your affiliation: its services are oriented toward Berkeley economics graduate students and faculty rather than the general public.

What EML provides

According to the lab's own description, EML is a "state-of-the-art and highly service-oriented computing facility" offering three broad categories of service:

• Extensive server services — shared computational infrastructure for users.
• Comprehensive user support — assistance for the people working on the systems.
• A wide selection of statistical, mathematical, and econometric software — the toolset needed for quantitative economics work.

The emphasis is on computational hardware and software suited to computationally intensive econometrics, which the lab describes as its research concentration.

Who it serves

EML's stated scope is narrow and academic:

If you are not a Berkeley economics graduate student or faculty member, the lab's core services are not described as being aimed at you.

What you can find on the site

The site is organized around a small set of entry points rather than a large content library. The visible sections include:

• Getting Started — with sub-items for getting an EML account, remote access, and the compute cluster.
• Related Resources — pointing to computing resources, the Econometrics Seminar, an About page, and "A Brief History of the EML."

So if your question is practical — how to obtain an account, how to connect remotely, or how to use the cluster — the Getting Started section is the intended path. If your question is contextual — what the lab is, who runs it, and how it came to be — the About and history pages are the relevant ones.

How to decide whether EML matters to you

• You are Berkeley economics graduate faculty or a graduate student: EML is your departmental computing facility, and the Getting Started pages are the place to begin.
• You are a researcher elsewhere looking for econometrics computing resources: EML's described services are tied to Berkeley economics affiliation, so treat it as a reference point for how such a lab is organized rather than as a service you can sign up for.
• You want to understand the institutional landscape: note that EML sits under IBER, not directly under the department, even though it is housed in department space — a structure common to research computing units.

The site itself does not publish pricing, eligibility exceptions, or access terms beyond the affiliation described above, so any question about whether you personally can obtain an account is best directed to the lab rather than inferred from the pages.