Noticias/News
Op-Ed
for Scientific American. April 2024.
Low-Earth
Orbit Faces a Spiraling Debris Threat (with A. Bongers).
New
WEB page (Journal of Economic Education,
52(4), 372, 2021):
A collection of Dynamic
Macroeconomics models, solved with Excel, can be found in the following
webpage:
http://macrodynamicsmodels.com
Dynamic
macroeconomic models, perhaps with the exception of the Solow growth model,
presents a number of difficulties to be taught in undergraduate economic
courses. In this Web, we present a collection of spreadsheets for solving a
variety of dynamic macroeconomics models in discrete time numerically, using as
a computer tool a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The collection of models
includes dynamic macroeconomic models with rational expectations, both
non-microfounded and microfounded, constituting a novel approach that
facilitates the learning and use of dynamic macroeconomic models in
undergraduate Advanced Macroeconomics courses and, in particular, for the
teaching of dynamic general equilibrium models, which have become the principal
tool for macroeconomic analysis nowadays, at an undergraduate level. Models
solved in Excel include a dynamic IS-LM model, the Dornbusch model of exchange
rate overshooting, the basic household maximization problem, the household
maximization problem with labor supply, the Tobin’s Q model, the basic Real
Business Cycle (RBC) model, a RBC model with Specific-Investment Technological
Change (ISTC), the Solow growth model, and the Ramsey optimal growth model.
Two
alternative methods are used for solving dynamic macroeconomic models in Excel.
The first one consists in using the Solver tool included in Excel for solving
micro-founded models in which some economic agent objective function must be
maximized. Whereas this approach offers a simple way to solve models, as we
only need to directly introduce in the spreadsheet the initial equations of the
models, and no analytical solution is needed, this method suffers from the
“black-box” problem, just like other more advanced codes and software available
for solving these type of models. The second method consists in numerically
simulate the model, by simply introducing the equations in Excel and
calibrating the exogenous variables and parameters of the models when the model
is linear. For micro-founded dynamic macroeconomic models where non-linearities
appears, the model must first be solved analytically and linearized before
numerically simulated directly in the spreadsheet. In this second method, no
computer optimization algorithm is needed.
The
main objective of this Web is to offers a spreadsheet-based method for
numerically solving dynamic macroeconomic models, including Dynamic General
Equilibrium models, without the requirement of learning computing languages as
MatLab or R. The reason why we use a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel is
because this software is easy to learn and is already well known, at least to
some degree, by students.