## Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models for policy analysis

What are DSGE models?

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models are used by macroeconomists to model multiple time series. A DSGE model is based on economic theory. A theory will have equations for how individuals or sectors in the economy behave and how the sectors interact. What emerges is a system of equations whose parameters can be linked back to the decisions of economic actors. In many economic theories, individuals take actions based partly on the values they expect variables to take in the future, not just on the values those variables take in the current period. The strength of DSGE models is that they incorporate these expectations explicitly, unlike other models of multiple time series.

DSGE models are often used in the analysis of shocks or counterfactuals. A researcher might subject the model economy to an unexpected change in policy or the environment and see how variables respond. For example, what is the effect of an unexpected rise in interest rates on output? Or a researcher might compare the responses of economic variables with different policy regimes. For example, a model might be used to compare outcomes under a high-tax versus a low-tax regime. A researcher would explore the behavior of the model under different settings for tax rate parameters, holding other parameters constant.

In this post, I show you how to estimate the parameters of a DSGE model, how to create and interpret an impulse response, and how to compare the impulse response estimated from the data with an impulse response generated by a counterfactual policy regime. Read more…

Categories: Statistics Tags:

## Ermistatas and Stata’s new ERMs commands

27 March 2018

Ermistatas is our most popular t-shirt these days. See it and you will understand why.

We call the character Ermistatas and he is thinking—Ermistatas cogitatu. Notice the electricity bolts being emitted and received by his three antennae.

The shirt is popular even among those who do not use Stata and it’s leading them to ask questions. “Who or what is Ermistatas and why is he, she, or it deserving of a t-shirt?”. Then they add, “And why three and not the usual two antennae?”

Ermistatas is the creation of our arts-and-graphics department to represent Stata 15’s new commands for fitting Extended Regression Models—a term we coined. We call it ERMs for short. The new commands are Read more…

## How to create animated graphics to illustrate spatial spillover effects

This post shows how to create animated graphics that illustrate the spatial spillover effects generated by a spatial autoregressive (SAR) model. After reading this post, you could create an animated graph like the following.

This post is organized as follows. First, I estimate the parameters of a SAR model. Second, I show why a SAR model can produce spatial spillover effects. Finally, I show how to create an animated graph that illustrates the spatial spillover effects. Read more…

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## The book that Stata programmers have been waiting for

27 February 2018

“The book that Stata programmers have been waiting for” is how the Stata Press describes my new book on Mata, the full title of which is

The Stata Press took its cue from me in claiming that it this the book you have been waiting for, although I was less presumptuous in the introduction:

This book is for you if you have tried to learn Mata by reading the Mata Reference Manual and failed. You are not alone. Though the manual describes the parts of Mata, it never gets around to telling you what Mata is, what is special about Mata, what you might do with Mata, or even how Mata’s parts fit together. This book does that.

I’m excited about the book, but for a while I despaired of ever completing it. I started and stopped four times. I stopped because the drafts were boring. Read more…

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## Programming an estimation command in Stata: Writing a Java plugin

This post is the fourth in a series that illustrates how to plug code written in another language (like C, C++, or Java) into Stata. This technique is known as writing a plugin or as writing a dynamic-link library (DLL) for Stata.

In this post, I write a plugin in Java that implements the calculations performed by mymean_work() in mymean11.ado, discussed in Programming an estimation command in Stata: Preparing to write a plugin, and I assume that you are familiar with that material.

This post is analogous to Programming an estimation command in Stata: Writing a C plugin and to Programming an estimation command in Stata: Writing a C++ plugin. The differences are due to the plugin code being in Java instead of C or C++. I do not assume that you are familiar with the material in those posts, and much of that material is repeated here.

This is the 32nd post in the series Programming an estimation command in Stata. See Programming an estimation command in Stata: A map to posted entries for a map to all the posts in this series. Read more…

Categories: Programming Tags:

## Programming an estimation command in Stata: Writing a C++ plugin

This post is the third in a series that illustrates how to plug code written in another language (like C, C++, or Java) into Stata. This technique is known as writing a plugin or as writing a dynamic-link library (DLL) for Stata.

In this post, I write a plugin in C++ that implements the calculations performed by mymean_work() in mymean11.ado, discussed in Programming an estimation command in Stata: Preparing to write a plugin. I assume that you are familiar with the material in that post.

This post is analogous to Programming an estimation command in Stata: Writing a C plugin. The differences are due to the plugin code being in C++ instead of C. I do not assume that you are familiar with the material in that post, and you will find much of it repeated here.

This is the 31st post in the series Programming an estimation command in Stata. I recommend that you start at the beginning. See Programming an estimation command in Stata: A map to posted entries for a map to all the posts in this series. Read more…

Categories: Programming Tags:

## Programming an estimation command in Stata: Writing a C plugin

This post is the second in a series that illustrates how to plug code written in another language (like C, C++, or Java) into Stata. This technique is known as writing a plugin or as writing a dynamic-link library (DLL) for Stata.

In this post, I write a plugin in C that implements the calculations performed by mymean_work() in mymean11.ado, discussed in Programming an estimation command in Stata: Preparing to write a plugin. I assume that you are familiar with the material in that post.

This is the 30th post in the series Programming an estimation command in Stata. See Programming an estimation command in Stata: A map to posted entries for a map to all the posts in this series. Read more…

Categories: Programming Tags:

## Programming an estimation command in Stata: Preparing to write a plugin

This post is the first in a series that illustrates how to plug code written in another language (like C, C++, or Java) into Stata. This technique is known as writing a plugin or as writing a dynamic-link library (DLL) for Stata.

Plugins can be written for any task, including data management, graphical analysis, or statistical estimation. Per the theme of this series, I discuss plugins for estimation commands.

In this post, I discuss the tradeoffs of writing a plugin, and I discuss a simple program whose calculations I will replace with plugins in subsequent posts.

This is the 29th post in the series Programming an estimation command in Stata. See Programming an estimation command in Stata: A map to posted entries for a map to all the posts in this series. Read more…

Categories: Programming Tags:

## Importing Facebook data into Stata

In a previous post, we released a new command to import Twitter data into Stata. We have now added another new command, facebook2stata, that imports Facebook data. To install facebook2stata, type

net install https://www.stata.com/users/kcrow/facebook2stata, replace

Categories: Data Management Tags: