Which programming language is best for economic research: Julia, Matlab, Python or R?

The most widely used programming languages for economic research are Julia, Matlab, Python and R. This column uses three criteria to compare the languages: the power of available libraries, the speed and possibilities when handling large datasets, and the speed and ease-of-use for a computationally intensive task. While R is still a good choice, Julia is the language the authors now tend to pick for new projects and generally recommend.