Dear Dynare friends,
We are pleased to announce the release of Dynare 5.3.
This maintenance release fixes various bugs.
The Windows, macOS and source packages are already available for
download atthe Dynare website.
All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade.
This release is compatible with MATLAB versions ranging from 8.3
(R2014a) to 9.13 (R2022b), and with GNU Octave version 7.3.0 (under
Windows).
Note for macOS users with an Apple Silicon processor, and who are also
MATLAB users: the official MATLAB version for use on those processors
is still the Intel version (running through Rosetta 2), so the official
Dynare package for download on our website is built for Intel only.
However, since Mathworks has released a beta version of MATLAB for
Apple Silicon, we created a beta package of Dynare that you can try
with it. See this forum thread for more
details:https://forum.dynare.org/t/testers-wanted-release-of-dynare-5-x-bet…
Here is a list of the problems identified in version 5.2 and that have
been fixed in version 5.3:
* Problems with the steady_state operator:
if a steady_state operator contained an algebraic expression
appearing
multiple times in the model and sufficiently complex to trigger the
creation of a temporary term, then the result of the operator would
be
wrong (the operator was essentially ignored)if a steady_state
operator contained a call to an external function, then
the result of the operator would be wrong (the operator was
essentially
ignored). A proper fix to this problem would require substantial
architectural changes, so for now it is forbidden to use an external
function inside a steady_state operator
* Pruning in particle filtering at order 2 was not using the exact
same formula
as the original Kim et al. (2008) paper. A second-order term entered
the
cross-product between states and shocks, where it should have been a
first-order term. This however would not lead to explosive
trajectories in
practice
* The simul_replic option of the stoch_simul command would not store
the
binary file in the Output folder
* Problems with Ramsey policy (ramsey_model/ramsey_policy commands):
steady state files would not work when auxiliary variables included
Lagrange multipliersfor linear competitive equilibrium laws of
motion, welfare evaluated at
higher order was erroneously equated to steady state welfare
* The discretionary_policy command would not always correctly infer
the
number of instruments and equations, leading to spurious error
messages
* Perfect foresight simulations of purely forward or backward models
would
crash if complex numbers were encountered
* When using both block and bytecode options of the model block, if
the
model was such that a sufficiently complex algebraic expression
appeared both
in the residuals and in the derivatives, leading to the creation of
a
temporary term, then the results could be incorrect under some
circumstances
* When using the bytecode option of the model block, leads of more
than
+127 or lags of less than -128 were not correctly handled
* Problems with the solver under occasionally binding constraints
(occbin_solver command):
when solving the baseline regime, it would not properly handle
errors like
Blanchard-Kahn violationsthe piecewise linear Kalman filter (PKF)
would crash if the model solution
could not be computed for a parameter drawthe
oo_.FilteredVariablesKStepAhead and oo_.UpdatedVariables
MATLAB/Octave variables would contain the steady state twicethe
inversion filter would crash if the filter_step_ahead or
state_uncertainty options were requestedthe PKF would crash if
filter_step_ahead=1 was specifiedthe PKF would crash if the
state_uncertainty option was specified
together with the smoother_redux optionthe last regime before the
system is back to normal times in the
two-constraints case could be wrongly set, possibly leading to wrong
simulations, lack of convergence or crashes
* Problems with identification (identification command):
with prior_mc>1 specified, it would incorrectly display the share of
rank
deficient Jacobiansit would crash during plotting or displaying
identification strength when
the necessary identification criteria based on moments could not be
computed
* The plot_shock_decomposition command would crash if invalid field
names
were encountered
* The shock_decomposition command would not pass specified initial
dates to
generated plots
* Various pathological cases encountered in steady state finding could
lead to
a crash
* The solve_algo=0 option of the steady command would not honor tolx
* In the dynare_sensitivity command, stability mapping would not
correctly
honor the prior bounds
As a reminder, the list of new features introduced in versions 5.x can
be found in the release notes for 5.0.
On behalf of the Dynare Team,
--
Sébastien Villemot
Economist at CEPREMAP
Dynare developer
https://sebastien.villemot.name
