Release of Dynare 4.5.4

Info
1

Dear Dynare users and friends,

We are pleased to announce the release of Dynare 4.5.4.

This is a bugfix release.

The Windows packages are already available for download at:

http://www.dynare.org/download/dynare-stable

The Mac and GNU/Linux packages (for Debian and Ubuntu LTS) should follow
soon.

This release is compatible with MATLAB versions 7.5 (R2007b) to 9.3
(R2017b) and with GNU Octave versions 4.2.

Here is a list of the problems identified in version 4.5.3 and that have
been fixed in version 4.5.4:

  • The type option of plot_shock_decomposition was always set to
    qoq regardless of what is specified.

  • Bug in GSA when no parameter was detected below pvalue threshold.

  • Various bug fixes in shock decompositions.

  • Bug in reading in macro arrays passed on dynare command line via
    the -D option.

  • Estimation with missing values was crashing if the prefilter option
    was used.

  • Added a workaround for a difference in behaviour between Octave and
    Matlab regarding the creation of function handles for functions that do
    not exist in the path. With Octave 4.2.1, steady state files did not
    work if no auxiliary variables were created.

  • The stoch_simul command was crashing with a cryptic message if
    option order=3 was used without setting k_order_solver.

  • In cases where the prior bounds are infinite and the mode is
    estimated at exactly 0, no mode_check graphs were displayed.

  • Parallel execution of MCMC was broken in models without auxiliary
    variables.

  • Reading data with column names from Excel might crash.

  • The multivariate Kalman smoother was crashing in case of missing data
    in the observations and Finf became singular.

  • The plot_shock_decomposition command ignored various user-defined
    options like fig_name, use_shock_groups or interactive and instead
    used the default options.

  • Nested @#ifdef and @#ifndef statements don’t work in the
    macroprocessor.

On behalf of the Dynare Team,
Stéphane.