This page documents new or previously undocumented features.

New in Dynare 4.0

Preprocessor

• MacroLanguage

• List of mathematical functions known to Dynare:

Dynare functions

• HomoTopy (using homotopy type methods to compute the steady state)

• MonteCarloOptimization (using a Metropolis Hastings to get an estimate of the posterior mode and a good covariance matrix for the jumping distribution)

• Matrix of variance-covariance of estimated parameters

• ConditionalForecast (how to condition the future path of a subset of endogenous variables).

• OptimalPolicy

• DsgeVar

• TracePlots

Octave support (free alternative to Matlab)

• DynareOctave

New in Dynare unstable (to be released as version 4.1)

• FastDeterministicSimulation

• ParallelDynare

• Shock decomposition

• A faster algorithm for steady state computation can be triggered by adding the block_mfs option to the steady command. This algorithm does the following:

  • performs a normalization of the static model
  • computes an ordered block decomposition of the static model
  • inside each block, eliminates the recursive variables by computing the minimum feedback set (MFS) of variables

  • performs the resolution block by block on the MFS, using the solver declared by option solve_algo

• Creating a LaTeX file containing the model equations

• The type of a symbol can now be changed after the symbol declaration. In the following example, alpha will be considered as a parameter, and beta as an endogenous.

var alpha;
parameters beta;
...
change_type(parameters) alpha;
change_type(var) beta;

Note that the type change applies to the whole MOD file. This command is mainly useful when symbol declarations are taken from an included file, and you want to change the types of some variables (for example for "variable flipping").

• The macro-language accepts a new operator in, which tests memberships of an element inside an array. In the following example, the body of the if statement will be evaluated:

@#define x = [ 1 3 5 ]
@#if 3 in x
...
@#endif

• The Dynare command line accepts three new options:

  • onlymacro: only do the macro-processing step and stop there

  • nolinemacro: do not include original line numbers in the macro-expanded MOD file

  • savemacro=filename: save the macro-expanded file in filename (if no filename is specified, a default value is computed: it is obtained by adding -macroexp to the name of the MOD file)