Dear users,
we are close to releasing Dynare 4.7, which will bring many exciting new features and improvements. Work on the new release has been finished with the exception of some documentation around semi-structural models.
At this stage, we would like to invite all users to thoroughly test the beta release candidate available at https://www.dynare.org/beta/ for bugs, compatibility issues, and regression behavior. A list of compatibility breaking features relative to version 4.6 can be found here. In case of encountering a problem, please contact us (preferably by reporting issues on Gitlab, but the forum is also fine).
Dear Johannes, dear Dynare team,
thank you very much for this new release. I am particularly excited about the new possibility of estimating models with occasionally binding constraints, both for my research but also for the DSGE model we are developping at the National Bank of Belgium for forecasting and policy simulations. Our main interest is taking the effective lower bound into account during estimations.
In order to familiarize myself with the new feature, after having a look at the RBC example with irreversible investment you provided, I have tried to estimate a small NK model on Euro Area data for GDP-deflator inflation, GDP and the short term interest rate. The mode finder works fine in the absence of the OBC, and I use that mode as a starting point for the mode-finder with the ELB constraint imposed, using the piece wise Kalman-Filter. However, it seems that the mode-finding algorithm runs immediately runs into problems (see the attached .log file). I am wondering whether this is simply due to the particularities of the model/ the data, or whether I have made a mistake in the way I have written down the OBC. The lines related to monetary policy and the OBC are in model_obc_small_lowkappa_c.mod, lines 201-204, and 246-248. The constraint is supposed to keep the “endogenous” component rnot above or equal to 0.25/4, approximately, ((consterr+constepinf) is the steady state quarterly nominal interest rate). Does the constraint I have coded achieve that goal…? When I use the simulation mode instead of the estimation mode, it looks as if the constraint is imposed correctly.
For occbin_setup, see line 295, and line 302 for the estimation command. Note that for the estimation I commented out occbin_solver. The estimation wouldn’t run otherwise.
As always, your help would be highly appreciated!
Best wishes,
Ansgar
I just wanted to add that it could be useful to include in the dynare release a simple NK model with an effective lower bound constraint programmed using the occbin option. I suspect that accounting for the ELB in estimations will be one of the new most widely used application of the new Occbin feature.
Best wishes,
Ansgar
Hello :-). Could somebody have a look at the .mod file I created, just to check whether my ELB constraint is meaningful? That would be very helpful because if yes then I could be sure that the problem is with the model and/or how the model matches (or doesn’t match) the data and would try again with a different model.
Many thanks for your help!
Ansgar
Hi Johannes,
thank you so much for checking, I will try that! Sorry for the delay in replying, I was knocked out for a while by sickness and other things!