This page documents known bugs in Dynare. A bug is associated with the latest version in which it appears (i.e. it has been or will be fixed in the next version).

Version 4.3.2

• Option use_dll is broken under Windows

• Degenerate case of purely static models (no leads/no lags) were not correctly handled
• Deterministic simulations over a single period were not correctly done

• The sensitivity call dynare_sensitivity(identification=1,morris=2); is buggy when there are no shocks estimated. A fix can be found here

• The relative IRF-option of posterior IRFs is broken

• shock_decomposition after using selected_variables_only-option fails

• Sometimes, only the last open graph is saved, leading to missing and duplicate eps-graphs

• rplot only works with rplottype=0 (undocumented option)

• Estimation with measurement errors is wrong if a correlation between two measurement errors is calibrated
• Forecasting after ML estimation when not forecasting at least one observed variables (var_obs) leads to crashes
• Some functionalities crash with MATLAB R2013a (bytecode, MS-SBVAR)

• Sometimes only the first order autocorrelation of moments_varendo is saved instead of all up to options_.ar

Version 4.3.1

• Occasional bug in computation of posterior distribution of unconditional variance decomposition. The bug only appears for very large models and can be fixed be deleting the line 128 (DecompFileNumber = DecompFileNumber - 1;) in dsge_simulated_theoretical_variance_decomposition.m

• Sometimes estimation and mode_compute=6 crash with the error Operands to the || and && operators must be convertible to logical scalar values. A fix can be found here

• Block and bytecode with a stochastic model at order >= 2 is unsupported (a more explicit error message will be given in future releases)

• Derivative of erf() function is incorrect

• The check function does not set oo_.dr.eigval unless stoch_simul is used (contrary to what is indicated in the reference manual)

• Bug in computation of conditional forecast when the constraint is only on one period

• Estimation with mode_compute=3 is broken under Octave

Version 4.3.0

• Shock decomposition is broken
• Bug in welfare computation when using ramsey_policy and histval
• Bug in estimation of models with missing observations
• Bug in posterior IRF

• The option simul_replic is broken. It must be set by specifying options_.simul_replic=[Integer] before the stoch_simul command

• @#ifdef broken

• Identification with max_dim_cova_group>1 is broken for specially degenerate models (when parameter theta has pairwise collinearity==1 with multiple other params, i.e. when all couples (theta,b), (theta,c), ... (theta,d) have perfect collinearity in the Jacobian of the model)

• parallel_test option is broken

• The Windows package is broken with MATLAB 7.1 and 7.2
• Estimation with correlated shocks is broken

• When using mode_compute=0 with a mode-file from mode_compute=6, mh_jscale is not loaded. A fix can be found here

• Using exogenous deterministic variables at 2nd order triggers a crash

• The option no_create_init for the ms_estimation command is broken.

• Loading of datafiles with explicit filename extension was not working

Version 4.2.5

• Backward models with option loglinear are incorrectly handled

• Solving for hyperparameters of Inverse Gamma Priors sometimes crashes. A fix can be found here

• The deterministic solver for purely forward models is broken. A fix can be found here

• When running estimation or identification on models with non-diagonal structural error covariance matrices while not simultaneously estimating the correlation between shocks (i.e. calibrating the correlation) Dynare handles the off-diagonal elements incorrectly or crashes.

• When using the option prefiltering, smoother plots omitt the smoothed observables. A fix can be found here

• In the rare case of entering and expression x as x^(alppha-1) with x being 0 in steady state and alppha being a parameter equal to 2, the Jacobian evaluates to 0 instead of 1. A fix can be found here

• Setting the prior for shock correlations fails if a lower bound is not explicitly specified.
• In rare cases where the last structural shock has very low standard deviation, posterior IRFs may crash. A fix is to add "stock_irf_dsge=zeros(options_.irf,nvar,M_.exo_nbr,MAX_nirfs_dsge);" in line 141 of PosteriorIRF_core1.m

Version 4.2.4

• For Windows users only: the Dynare++ binary is broken in the Windows package (missing library); use the 4.2.2 package if you need Dynare++ (but otherwise use 4.2.4 for Dynare itself)
• Sometimes Dynare fails to detect MATLAB optimization toolbox

Version 4.2.3

• 2nd order approximation broken for most models (this problem only affects 4.2.3, not previous versions)

• model_diagnostics command broken

• Inverse gamma priors give incorrect results in some cases with very small variances

Version 4.2.2

• steady_state_model is broken for lags higher than 2

• simult_.m does not work with order=3 if k_order_solver has not been explicitly specified

• stoch_simul with order=3 and without periods reports dummy theoretical moments

• solve_algo=0 crashes under Octave in check and stoch_simul (but not steady)

• Identification is buggy
• the test for singularity in the model reporting eigenvalues close to 0/0 may report false positive

• conditional_variance_decomposition option doesn't work if one period is 0. Now, Dynare reports an error if the periods are not strictly positive.

• Second order approximation buggy if one variable is not present at the current period

Version 4.2.1

• The conditional_forecast command is buggy: it always uses the posterior mode, whatever the value of the parameter_set option

• Some native MATLAB statements are not correctly passed on to MATLAB (e.g. x = { 'foo' 'bar' } )

• With the block option of model, the preprocessor fails if there is an expression of the form "a^b" (with no endogenous in "a" but an endogenous in "b")

• Potential crashes with external_function

• MEX files for MATLAB fail to compile with GCC 4.6

• STEADY_STATE does not work correctly when it contains certain types of expressions (those that contain addition/subtraction) as it fails to place parenthesis around it

• The secondary rank test following the order test of the Blanchard and Kahn condition is faulty and almost never triggered.
• The variance prior for BVAR "à la Sims" with only one lag is inconsistent; the solution implemented consists of adding one extra observation in the presample used to compute the prior; as a consequence, the numerical results for all estimations will be slightly different in future releases (thanks to Marek Jarociński for spotting this)
• The lambda parameter for HP filter was restricted to integer values for no good reason

• The load_mh_file option of estimation crashes under Octave for Windows (MinGW version)

• Computation of steady state fails when model contains auxiliary variables because of leads or lags larger than 2 or because of the expectation operator.
• Identification does not work with MATLAB older than R2009b

Version 4.2.0

• STEADY_STATE operator is buggy

• This version does not work with MATLAB 7.3 (R2006b) and older

• ramsey_policy does not compute the value of the planner objective, contrarily to what is announced in the NewFeatures list

• partial_information option of stoch_simul is broken

• Option conditional_variance_decomposition of stoch_simul and estimation is broken

• Automatic detrending does not work in conjunction with EXPECTATION operator

• Octave 3.4 is not fully supported, though most files should work

• Using percentage sign inside strings in MATLAB statements (like disp('% This is not a comment %')) does not work

• Beta prior with a very small standard deviation doesn't work unless you have Matlab Statistical toolbox.
• External functions do not work when assigned to model local variables

• identification is buggy

• Option cova_compute of estimation command is buggy

• 3rd order approximation without use_dll option can under some circumstances lead to a crash or a dummy result

Version 4.1.3

• Under Octave, the deterministic solver fails on models with more than one lead or one lag

• Exogenous variables in histval are incorrectly handled in a stochastic setup

• varexo_det does not work in conjunction with use_dll

• EXPECTATION operator works incorrectly when more than one such operator is invoked on the same expression with differing information sets (e.g., something like EXPECTATION(1)(x) and EXPECTATION(-2)(x) appear in the same model block).
• Estimation fails under Octave if there is only one observed variable
• This version of Dynare does not compile against Boost libraries 1.44 or newer

Version 4.1.2

• third order approximation can be wrong or make Dynare fail on some models

• check command fails in deterministic setup (corrected in unstable 07/23/2010)

• the covariance elements of optim_weights (used with osr) are not working properly

• in a stochastic setup, model local variables are systematically replaced by their expression in the static/dynamic M/C files, resulting in huge output if there is a lot of such variables (bugfix changeset)

• EXPECTATION operator with a lag makes stoch_simul crash

• the histval block is buggy in the presence of auxiliary variables (i.e. when there are lags of two or more)

• the preprocessor crashes when the mean or stderr of an estimated parameter with beta PDF is specified as an expression instead of a plain value
• deterministic simulation with block decomposition crash when there is a purely backward or purely forward block of more than one equation

• STEADY_STATE operator does not work with use_dll option or with block without bytecode

• the preprocessor crashes when some dynamic variables appear only in unused model local variables

• stoch_simul: in the presence of non-stationary variables, and when selecting only a subset of variables for the output, the "NaN"s in the "mean" column may be wrongly placed

Version 4.1.1

• Models with leads on exogenous can be mishandled (creation of AuxiliaryVariables is buggy in that case)

• Option mode_compute=6 of estimation command fails under Octave

• normcdf() primitive cannot be used with bytecode option

• In the macro-processor, integer ranges a:b where a>b are not empty

Version 4.1.0

• Optimal simple rule (OSR) is broken in models with no unit root
• Root mean squared error is wrong for BVAR forecast
• Dynare++ binary shipped in Windows package crashes on some MOD files (it is a problem with the C++ compiler used to create it). Until a new Dynare is released, Windows users should use the Dynare++ binary distributed in the snapshot
• Bug in mode_check when the last screen of plots isn't complete
• dynasave command is broken
• Under Octave 3.0, option stack_solve_algo=3 is broken
• Under Octave/Windows with USE_DLL, Dynare requires option 'cygwin' or 'msvc', although it makes no use of it
• Conditional forecasts are wrong in models with non zero steady state or trends

Version 4.0.4

• 2nd order approximation of decision rules for stochastic models with leads greater than 2 are wrong

• in deterministic models, putting a shocks block before an endval block leads to wrong results; the right order is to put endval before shocks

• this version doesn't support MATLAB R2009a and R2009b on 64-bit platforms

• in estimation, option mode_file shouldn't be used if the posterior mode has been computed for a model with a different specification, even if the list of estimated parameters is the same. This can result in wrong results without error message

• with Octave, in stochastic simulations, Dynare will return wrong eigenvalues if the MEX file "mjdgges" is not present
• the resid() function messes up things when doing deterministic simulations, and should be avoided in that case

Version 4.0.2

• Option dr_algo has been suppressed without warning in this version

Version 4.0.1

• shocks_file option is missing

• there is a bug in DsgeSmoother.m for models with measurement errors (thanks for hlousek for reporting it)

• Octave crashes in mode_check.m, MakeAllFigures.m and PosteriorIRF.m, because of missing saveas() function (thanks to Gianni Lombardo for reporting)

• estimation crashes when mode_file is specified, at least under Octave (thanks to Gianni Lombardo for reporting)

Version 4.0.0

• typo at the top of DiffuseKalmanSmootherH1.m (thanks to Tsu-ting Tim Lin for reporting)

• call to cumulative normal distribution is broken (thanks to Karl Walentin for reporting)
• script for building MEX files under Matlab R2008a is broken (thanks to Slim Bridji for reporting)
• homotopy mode 3 is broken
• BVAR à la Sims: Dynare doesn't accept integer values for tau and lambda parameters (thanks to Aqua for reporting)