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 at
the 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-beta-for-apple-silicon-m1-m2-chips/20499Here 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 multipliers
- for 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 violations
- the piecewise linear Kalman filter (PKF) would crash if the model solution
could not be computed for a parameter draw
- the
oo_.FilteredVariablesKStepAhead and oo_.UpdatedVariables
MATLAB/Octave variables would contain the steady state twice
- the inversion filter would crash if the
filter_step_ahead or
state_uncertainty options were requested
- the PKF would crash if
filter_step_ahead=1 was specified
- the PKF would crash if the
state_uncertainty option was specified
together with the smoother_redux option
- the 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 Jacobians
- it 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,