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Lecture

Economic Model Coding

In course

FIN-406: Macrofinance

This course provides students with a working knowledge of macroeconomic models that explicitly incorporate financial markets. The goal is to develop a broad and analytical framework for analyzing the interaction of financial decisions, macroeconomic events ...

Description

This lecture covers a practical exercise session on coding economic models, focusing on implementing equations, variables, and constraints in MATLAB. The instructor guides students through solving problems related to wage responses, dividends, interest rates, and state variables. Discussions include the importance of economic intuition in model interpretation, the distinction between state and control variables, and the implications of closed economies. Students are encouraged to provide economic narratives in their answers and to consider the impact of shocks on model outcomes. The session also addresses common coding issues, such as function conflicts in MATLAB and the normalization of variables. The instructor emphasizes the need for precision in coding while allowing for simplifying assumptions to facilitate model implementation.

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Instructors (3)

Stylianos Tsiaras

I am a scientific collaborator at the Luisa Lambertini's Chair of International Finance at the Swiss Finance Inst i tute. Previously I was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. I got my PhD in economics at the University of Surrey. My thesis was supervised by Professor Martin Kaae Jensen and Dr. Tom Holden. My recent research explores the set of unconventional monetary policies by the European Central Bank and their impact on the macroeconomy, welfare and inequality.

Luisa Lambertini

Luisa Lambertini is Full Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), where she holds the Chair of International Finance. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1995, her Master of Science in Economics from Warwick University in 1989 and a Laurea cum Laude from the Universita' degli Studi di Bologna in 1987. Prior to coming to EPFL, Professor Lambertini was Associate Professor at Claremont McKenna College 2005-06, Associate Professor at Boston College 2003-06 and Assistant Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles 1995-03. Professor Lambertini's research is in international finance, open-economy macroeconomics and political economy. She studies how monetary and fiscal policies affect the economy, how they interact and how they can be used to achieve good economic outcomes and improve social welfare. Professor Lambertini's research focuses on how monetary and fiscal institutions should be designed to successfully mitigate the impact of unexpected shocks while pursuing long-run goals consistent with price stability and fiscal sustainability. These issues are even more important for small open economies in an interdependent world and for countries that adopt a common currency. Professor Lambertini has published articles in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, the European Economic Review, the Journal of International Economics and the Economic Journal, among others. She was a Consultant in the Fiscal Policies Division of the European Central Bank and she has organized several international conferences. More details on my CV

Christian Pröbsting

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Related concepts (16)

Huffman coding

In computer science and information theory, a Huffman code is a particular type of optimal prefix code that is commonly used for lossless data compression. The process of finding or using such a code is Huffman coding, an algorithm developed by David A. Huffman while he was a Sc.D. student at MIT, and published in the 1952 paper "A Method for the Construction of Minimum-Redundancy Codes". The output from Huffman's algorithm can be viewed as a variable-length code table for encoding a source symbol (such as a character in a file).

Interest rate

An interest rate is the amount of interest due per period, as a proportion of the amount lent, deposited, or borrowed (called the principal sum). The total interest on an amount lent or borrowed depends on the principal sum, the interest rate, the compounding frequency, and the length of time over which it is lent, deposited, or borrowed. The annual interest rate is the rate over a period of one year. Other interest rates apply over different periods, such as a month or a day, but they are usually annualized.

Dividend

A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, it is able to pay a portion of the profit as a dividend to shareholders. Any amount not distributed is taken to be re-invested in the business (called retained earnings). The current year profit as well as the retained earnings of previous years are available for distribution; a corporation is usually prohibited from paying a dividend out of its capital.

Interest

In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distinct from a fee which the borrower may pay to the lender or some third party. It is also distinct from dividend which is paid by a company to its shareholders (owners) from its profit or reserve, but not at a particular rate decided beforehand, rather on a pro rata basis as a share in the reward gained by risk taking entrepreneurs when the revenue earned exceeds the total costs.

Market economy

A market economy is an economic system in which the decisions regarding investment, production and distribution to the consumers are guided by the price signals created by the forces of supply and demand. The major characteristic of a market economy is the existence of factor markets that play a dominant role in the allocation of capital and the factors of production.

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