Toolkits and add-ons
DIGNAR-19 toolkit with Giovanni Melina and Louis-Felipe Zanna (2021)
The DIGNAR-19 (Debt-Investment-Grwoth, Natural Resources and COVID-19) toolkit is an application designed to facilitate the use of the DIGNAR-19 model by economists with little to no knowledge of Matlab and Dynare, via a user-friendly Excel-based interface. The framework allows the user to incorporate shocks associated with the pandemic and produces macroeconomic scenarios with an emphasis on GDP growth and government debt, conditional on domestic and supranational policy responses, while benefiting from an internally consistent setup delivered by a general equilibrium approach.
The toolkit comprises three tools—the simulation tool, the graphing tool, and the realism tool—that translate the contents of an Excel input file into instructions for Matlab/Dynare programs. This minimizes the user's interactions with these programs, largely executed behind the scenes. Outputs are saved in a separate Excel file that users can visualize in customizable charts. The toolkit requires that Excel, Matlab, and Dynare are installed on the user’s computer.
Download from IMF: toolkit and user manual
DIGNAD toolkit with Cian Ruane and Azar Sultanov (2023)
The DIGNAD (Debt-Investment-Growth and Natural Disasters) toolkit builds on the extension of the Debt, Investment and Growth model of Buffie et al. (2012) to natural disasters following Marto, Papageorgiou and Klyuev (2018), allowing the user to run the model from an Excel interface. The model captures the challenges of closing infrastructure gaps in developing countries that frequently face natural disasters. In addition to permanent damages to public and private capital, natural disasters cause temporary losses of productivity, inefficiencies during the reconstruction process, and damages to the sovereign's creditworthiness.
The toolkit enables users to evaluate debt sustainability risks following natural disasters amidst the need to rebuild public infrastructure through the lens of a rich general equilibrium structure. The model can also be used to analyze the effects of ex-ante policies, such as building adaptation infrastructure, increasing fiscal buffers, or improving public investment efficiency. The model can be calibrated using country-specific macroeconomic indicators, and users can additionally calibrate the size and timing of natural disasters, and the various mechanisms through which they affect macroeconomic aggregates. The toolkit will therefore be of use to economists and policymakers looking to develop tailored analysis of the macro-fiscal impacts of natural disasters and investments in resilience.
Download from IMF: toolkit and user manual
TEHESM add-on with Michael Ben-Gad and Joseph Pearlman (2023)
The TEHESM (Tool for the Evaluation of Historical Episodes using Structural Models) add-on builds on the approach to shock decompositions using DSGE models in Aligishiev, Ben-Gad, and Pearlman (2023). The add-on allows to seamlessly incorporate the approach in the Dynare toolkit for Matlab.
Download from github: codes and readme file
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