R or Python for private sector economist/strategist Quick question (but complex answer) : R or Python ? 

I work as an economist/Strategist in the finance industry. As I do a lot of presentations, notes-writing, data searching, my programming time is limited but we try to develop “small scale” models to answer economic/finance questions. So, I mainly do standard stuff such as PCA/factor models SVAR with sign restrictions, VECM…I usually use what tools is best suited for the job (if I find replication codes I can adapt for instance), so usually MATLAB for SVARs and factor analysis, Eviews for quick and dirty stuff…

Now, I am looking at Python and R (which I dabbled with a few years go). Python is broader and I could use it for other stuff (like automate boring stuff with a comp or an iPad) but it seems there are fewer pure econometrics packages than in R (did not find anything for SVAR with sign restrictions for instance). I am looking to extract data from the web as well, and although they both seem to be able to do that, Python, seems more suited right ? 

I know there is always the possibility of calling one from the other (with like Rpy) but then you need to learn both languages. 
Any advice ? 

Thanks!
If you already know how to code in MATLAB then python is more similar to it than R so I would say you will have easier time to transitioning there. 

Otherwise, both R and Python are programming languages so you will be able to do all those things in both of them as you can always program your own functions.

The strength of R is that the language has a large following in the research community, which then in turn means that people write a lot of packages that focus on exactly the models that are commonly used in research. For more than two decades academics and statisticians basically helped to develop R so you can now find library for anything there save for really the most cutting edge econometric techniques - and you can bet that the first place where those will get their packages will be R. For most of the things you describe in your post you will have some excellent libraries and they are relatively more easier to estimate with R than with Python. 

Python is more of an general purpose programming language which strength is very intuitive syntax. Writing in Python can sometimes feel like writing in pseudo code - its very intuitive and natural. However, since its more general purpose language its not as tailored to statistical analysis as R. You will definitely be able to do all you want to do there but more routine statistical analysis will be a bit more time consuming to code.  

I actually prefer using R for any standard statistical analysis and Python for numerical analysis &amp; machine learning &amp; mining data through web-scraping.