RBC_Est.mod Errors

Dynare help (legacy posts)
1

Hi, think this topic had been dealt many times but face a new error message like below
(already set the mean and variance of psi with gamma.pdf as 1.75, 0.1 respectively)
Do we miss something in last estimation command of RBC_Est.mod?

========================

You did not declare endogenous variables after the estimation/calib_smoother command.

***MESSAGE FROM ROUTINE D9LGIT IN LIBRARY SLATEC.
***FATAL ERROR, PROG ABORTED, TRACEBACK REQUESTED

  • NO CONVERGENCE IN 200 TERMS OF CONTINUED FRACTION
  • ERROR NUMBER = 3

***END OF MESSAGE

***JOB ABORT DUE TO FATAL ERROR.
0 ERROR MESSAGE SUMMARY
LIBRARY SUBROUTINE MESSAGE START NERR LEVEL COUNT
SLATEC D9LGIT NO CONVERGENCE IN 20 3 2 8

error: Due to a bug in Octave, you must choose other values for mean and/or variance of your prior on psi, or use another shape
error: called from:
error: h:\dynare\4.4.3\matlab\draw_prior_density.m at line 58, column 13
error: h:\dynare\4.4.3\matlab\plot_priors.m at line 55, column 38
error: h:\dynare\4.4.3\matlab\dynare_estimation_init.m at line 257, column 13
error: h:\dynare\4.4.3\matlab\dynare_estimation_1.m at line 81, column 63
error: h:\dynare\4.4.3\matlab\dynare_estimation.m at line 89, column 5
error: H:\dynare\work\RBC_Est.m at line 159, column 1

2

Using Dynare 4.4.3 and Octave 3.8.2 versions now.
It seems that errors has something to do in part with GNU GUI…

If I add graphics_toolkit(“gnuplot”); then more graphs come out but a long warning message show up like below

warning: division by zero
warning: division by zero
warning: division by zero
warning: division by zero
warning: division by zero
warning: division by zero
warning: division by zero
warning: division by zero
Loading 1001 observations from simuldataRBC.m

Restricting the sample to observations 500 to 699. Using in total 200 observations.
Initial value of the log posterior (or likelihood): 668.828
warning: implicit conversion from matrix to real vector
Acceptance ratio [during last 500]: 0.251750 [0.304000] 2% done
warning: implicit conversion from matrix to real vector
Acceptance ratio: 0.362400 100% done

==========================================================
Change in the covariance matrix = 10.
Mode improvement = 6.6106
New value of jscale = 0.0004874

3

Hi, here’s another example of incomplete run…
don’t know what went wrong…
thanks
rbc_est.txt (50.3 KB)

4

Please provide all files to replicate the issue in a zip or rar-file

5

Dear Pfeifer,

Attached pls find the files. The RBC_Est.mod is the same as one presented in DYNARE User Guide(2007-208) pp54.
RBC_Est.zip (246 KB)

6

I was unable to replicate any problems with Matlab. I will have to try it with Octave. Which Dynare version are you using?

7

I am using Dynare 4.4.3 and Octave 3.8.2…
Thanks.

8

It seems there is no reason to worry. Octave seems to have a hard time computing the moments of the prior distribution specified, but finally succeeds. After that, everything runs as expected-

9

Thanks a lot!
However still not sure if I got all the ouputs and the graphs right and correctly from the estimation. For example, the 4th graph of comparing historical and smoothed values look totally overlapped and same. I think it should be different but something might have gone wrong. I would appreciate if you can send me all outputs and graphs estimated with Matlab or Octave.
graph.zip (45.6 KB)

10

For observed variables, the smoothed and historical values must be the same (unless there is measurement error). The results look OK.