stoch_simul seeding problems

[cjones]

Hi everyone

I'm new to the forums and reasonably new to Dynare. Just wanted to mention: When I try to simulate data from a model with stoch_simul(periods=x), it seems as though Dynare is producing the same set of shocks each time I simulate. You can, however, explicitly change the seed to generate different shocks.

I know this was different in earlier versions of Dynare -- each simulation generated different series -- and it seemed like a pretty important difference, so I thought I'd mention it in case it is a bug.

.mod file used is attached (Ireland, 2004). I'm using Dynare 4.2.1.

Thanks,
Callum

[jpfeifer]

Hi, it's not a bug, it's a feature that has been introduced. Fixing the seed assures that the simulations are by default comparable between different runs of Dynare. It also means that someone else who has your mod-file obtains exactly the same results as you do.