GitLab

This page documents the bugs fixed in released versions of Dynare. For bugs fixed in previous versions of Dynare, please read the dedicated frozen page on the DynareWiki.

Bugs fixed in version 4.6.1

• Installation on macOS would fail if the GCC compiler was supposed to be installed and www.google.com was not reachable or blocked. (Bug fixed in 76902841)
• Dynare++ was missing the dynare_simul.m file. (See !1713 (merged))
• The parameter vector M_.params would not be correctly updated after calls to stoch_simul and discretionary_policy if parameters had been modified in a steady state file. (See #1711 (closed))
• The stoch_simul command with both the nograph and TeX options would crash. (See !1715 (merged))
• The stoch_simul command with the noprint option would crash. (See !1721 (merged))
• The prior moments command would crash if the used parameter vector triggered an error code. (See !1721 (merged))
• In case of problem, the discretionary_policy command would crash instead of aborting with a proper error code. (See !1716 (merged))
• Computing of prior/posterior statistics would not work in parallel. (Bug fixed in 54fe1c75)
• Closing of parallel estimation on GNU/Linux could crash. (Bug fixed in 25d79301)
• The histval command would not work in combination with the predetermined_variables command. (See preprocessor#47 (closed))
• Ramsey optimal policy with multiple instruments would crash if a steady state file returned complex values, instead of providing an error message. (See !1720 (merged))
• The model_diagnostics command would not correctly update the parameter vector if the latter was set in a steady state file. (See !1722 (merged))
• The model_diagnostics command would ignore the nocheck steady state flag. (See !1722 (merged))

Bugs fixed in version 4.6.0

• Estimation: the check for stochastic singularity erroneously would only take estimated measurement error into account. (Bug fixed in da0ad673)
• Estimation: if the Hessian at the mode was not positive definite, the Laplace approximation returned a complex number, but only displayed the real-valued part. (Bug fixed in 00757767)
• Conditional Forecasting: using one period only would result in a crash. (Bug fixed in 33f19d35)
• First-order approximation was not working with purely forward-looking models. (See #1641 (closed), bug fixed in 7a2d5d4f)
• The preprocessor would not allow for inline comments including macro statements. (See preprocessor#8 (closed), bug fixed by rewrite of macro processor: commits preprocessor@17e040f3 to preprocessor@15620163)
• Using the STEADY_STATE() operator on exogenous variables would lead to crashes in stochastic simulations. (see #825 (closed))
• moment_calibration: for autocorrelation functions, the x-axis labeling had the wrong order. (Bug fixed in 8713e46c)
• plot_identification: placement of white dots indicating infinite values was incorrect
• Automatic detrending would sometime refuse to detrend model despite the user having given correct trends. (See #1389 (closed))
• Using use_dll + fast options would not always recompile the model when the equations were changed. (See #1661 (closed))
• Under certain circumstances, the combination of bytecode and stack_solve_algo=1 options could lead to crashes or wrong results. (see #1652 (closed))

Bugs fixed in version 4.5.7

• The mex-file conducting the QZ decomposition erroneously applied the qz_criterium to the square absolute value of eigenvalues instead of the absolute value itself (as done in mjdgges.m and the AIM solver) (bug fixed in dcac7992; see #1632 (closed))
• In pathological cases, mode_compute=5 (newrat) might enter an infinite loop (bug fixed in d5e25c8f; see also #1636 (closed))
• discretionary_policy might erroneously state that the derivatives of the objective function are non-zero if there are NaN present (bug fixed in 8cb99bfe; see also !1644 (merged))
• Dynare++, when conducting the QZ decomposition, erroneously applied the qz_criterium to the square absolute value of eigenvalues instead of the absolute value itself (bug fixed in 8f738f10; see also #1632 (closed))
• Dynare++: IRFs were incorrectly computed (bug fixed in 8698b4c5; see also #1634 (closed))
• dynare_sensitivity did not display the figures of irf_calibration, it only stored them on the disk (bug fixed in d613d11b)
• Scatter plots generated by dynare_sensitivity did not correctly display LaTeX names (bug fixed in b0d5eadd)
• Parameter updating via steady state files did not correctly work in case of using [static]/[dynamic] equation tags (bug fixed in 5beea983; see #1627 (closed))
• Memory leaks in k_order_pert could lead to crashes (bugs fixed in 7c5ca5f8, 9dce3b83, and f25ec51f)
• Predetermined variables were not properly set when used in model local variables (bug fixed in a07f3fde)
• Posterior moment computation did not correctly update the covariance matrix of exogenous shocks during posterior sampling (bug fixed in !1627 (closed))
• Dynare was crashing with a cryptic message if a non estimated parameter was initialized in the estimated_params_init block (fixed in e11c3744 and caac1502; see #1610 (closed))
• The forecast command crashed if the model was declared as linear and contained deterministic exogenous variables (bug fixed in fda02185 and 14eb831c; see #1608 (closed))
• Block decomposition is broken when used in conjunction with varexo_det (bug fixed in preprocessor@fa039b8c)
• The model was not correctly specified when identification was run without another stochastic command in the .mod file (e.g. estimation, stoch_simul, etc.). See #1631 (closed) (bug fixed in preprocessor@4c71d143)
• Realtime annualized shock decompositions added the wrong steady state value (bug fixed in 5badd343)
• mh_recover option crashed when using slice sampler (bug fixed in 4ba9c929)
• x-axis values in plots of moment restrictions were wrong for autocovariances (bug fixed in b0e7c47a)
• dynasave and dynatype did not accept exogenous variables (bug fixed in bf102030)

Bugs fixed in version 4.5.6

• TaRB sampler: incorrect last posterior was returned if the last draw was rejected (bug fixed in 433a6816).
• Fixed online particle filter by drawing initial conditions in the prior distribution (see particles@ef22c716)
• Fixed evaluation of the likelihood in non linear / particle filters (see particles@427e88e6, particles@1f08164b and particles@35c3a9fc)
• Added missing documented montecarlo option in Gaussian Filter and Nonlinear Kalman Filter (bug fixed in particles@ee6eaa84 and particles@28f7c762)
• Added back a flag to deal with errors on Cholesky decomposition in the Conditional Particle Filter (bug fixed in particles@43615ce4)
• Macroprocessor length() operator was returning 1 when applied to a string. Macroprocessor now raises an error when length() operator is called on an integer and return the number of characters when applied to a string (bug fixed in d056df32)
• mode_compute=8: the error code during mode-finding was not correctly handled, resulting in crashes (bug fixed in 97229177)
• Identification was not correctly displaying a message for collinear parameters if there was no unidentified parameter present (bug fixed in b8094a2e and 6607d390)

Bugs fixed in version 4.5.5

• Identification was crashing during prior sampling if ar was initially too low (bug fixed in 09ac7f62)
• The align method on dseries did not return a functional second dseries output (bug fixed in 667bfb69).
• perfect_foresight_solver with option stack_solve_algo=7 was not working correctly when an exogenous variable has a lag greater than 1 (bug fixed in 8913791f79484607)
• identification with prior_mc option would crash if the number of moments with non-zero derivative is smaller than the number of parameters (bug fixed in 09ac7f62)
• Calling several times normcdf or normpdf with the same arguments in a model with block decomposition (but not bytecode) was leading to incorrect results (bug fixed in 745e3c9d)

Bugs fixed in version 4.5.4

• The type option of plot_shock_decomposition is always set to qoq, regardless of what is specified (bug fixed in ff1ae57e).

• Bug in GSA when no parameter is detected below pvalue threshold (fixed in ec35210e).

• Various bug fixes in shock decompositions (see 45166aba, 5d6b688f, a04b2876, fd8a69d9, 3e589d24, a63bc5b7, and f4b25efc).

• Bug in reading in macro arrays passed on dynare command line via the -D option (see 204d9cd0, and 3a622738)

• Estimation with missing values was crashing if the prefilter option was used (see 92549e48).

• Added a workaround for a difference in behaviour between Octave and Matlab regarding the creation of function handles for functions that do not exist in the path. With Octave 4.2.1, steady state files did not work if no auxiliary variables were created (see 99e4cb6e).

• The stoch_simul command was crashing with a cryptic message if option order=3 was used without setting k_order_solver (see 28b499af).

• In cases where the prior bounds are infinite and the mode is estimated at exactly 0, no mode_check graphs were displayed (see ef797eec).

• Parallel execution of MCMC was broken in models without auxiliary variables (see ec3fb76a, and bbdde462).

• Reading data with column names from Excel might crash (see 8e73289f).

• The multivariate Kalman smoother was crashing in case of missing data in the observations and Finf became singular (see cbc0cdfe).

• The plot_shock_decomposition command ignored various user-defined options like fig_name, use_shock_groups or interactive and instead used the default options (see 5e7256da and b3bcd2c8).

• Nested @#ifdef and @#ifndef statements don't work in the macroprocessor (see 047597d4)

Bugs fixed in version 4.5.3

• isfile routine was failing with matlab older than R2016b, (bug reported here and fixed in fa26ab10).

Bugs fixed in version 4.5.2

• perfect_foresight_solver. If expected shocks were declared after the terminal period, as specified by the periods option, Dynare was crashing (see 97b894a1, 10047fee and 131a68ea).

• perfect_foresight_solver. Models declared with the linear option were crashing if exogenous variables were present with a lead or lag (see a1c34979, 1a4257ac and 54298217).

• After ML, Bayesian estimation when not specifying the smoother option or mh_replic=0 not all smoothed measurement errors were displayed (see 4cd259ba).

• conditional_forecasts. Fixed error in reference manual (see b4a52b80).

• Smoother. Provide informative error instead of crashing when model cannot be solved (see 8ccebd9e).

• The nopathchange preprocessor option was always triggered, regardless of whether it was passed or not (see 41e6ecaa).

• When ramsey_policy is used, allow state variables to be set in histval block. (see #1193 (closed))

• histval erroneously accepts leads, leading to cryptic crashes (see #1510 (closed))

• The prior MC draws from previous runs were not deleted, potentially resulting in loading stale files (see !1515 (merged))

• estim_params_ was being declared global more than once. (see #1518 (closed))

• Fixed crashes happening when simulating linear models with order>1 (see 0f84dadb).

• Make empirical moments independent of simul_replic, as stated in the reference manual, by outputting moments computed with the first simulated sample (see f0b9f453).

• The prior_function required a preceding estimation-command to properly set up the prior (see 802536da).

• If the mode for a parameter was at exactly 0, mode_check was crashing (see 86e64648)

• Fixed get_posterior_parameters-routine which should not do more than getting parameters (see 0f3b68ee and #1506 (closed)). As a consequecence, the shock_decomposition-command does not correctly set the parameter_set for use in subsequent function calls if shocks are correlated or measurement error is present.

• Fixed bug in Ramsey problem with constraints both on a policy instrument and another variable. (see b1fc34ef). Note that the constraint on a variable that is not an instrument of the Ramsey problem must be written with an equation tag in the model block.

• Fixed bug in Ramsey problem with constraints on policy instrument (see 0068f9f6).

• Fixed crash with optimizer 5 ('newrat') when not used with DSGE model at order 1 (see #1494 (closed) and da063b2e)

Bugs fixed in version 4.5.1

• Fixed out of memory issue with simpsa algorithm (see 89326090).

• Added missing plots for measurement errors with generate_trace_plot command (see aa2a1e4d)

• Posterior moments after MCMC for very big models (size_of_the_reduced_form_model(oo_.dr)*options_.sub_draws>options_.MaximumNumberOfMegaBytes) were not correctly computed and their plotting might crash Dynare (see 0b9244dc)

• Results of the posterior conditional variance decomposition after MCMC were not correctly computed (see 0b9244dc)

• Options use_shock_groups and colormap of the shock_decomposition command were not working (see !1470 (merged) and 6de21764)

• Added a clean error message if sensitivity toolbox is used with recursive estimation (see 970feee3)

• Computation of posterior filtered variables was crashing in models with only one variable (see 1f20ceb4)

• Fixed various typos and errors in the reference manual

Bugs fixed in version 4.5.0

• BVAR models

  • bvar_irf could display IRFs in an unreadable way when they moved from negative to positive values (see bf707c19),

  • In contrast to what is stated in the documentation, the confidence interval size conf_sig was 0.6 by default instead of 0.9 (see #338 (closed)).

• Conditional forecasts

  • The conditional_forecast command produced wrong results in calibrated models when used at initial values outside of the steady state (given with initval) (see #665 (closed)),

  • The plot_conditional_forecast option could produce unreadable figures if the areas overlap (see !1155 (merged)),

  • The conditional_forecast command after MLE crashed (see !1220 (closed)),

  • In contrast to what is stated in the manual, the confidence interval size conf_sig was 0.6 by default instead of 0.8 (see #338 (closed)).

  • Conditional forecasts were wrong when the declaration of endogenous variables was not preceeding the declaration of the exogenous variables and parameters (see #1276 (closed), fixed in !1277 (merged)).

• Discretionary policy

  • Dynare allowed running models where the number of instruments did not match the number of omitted equations (see !1042 (merged)),

  • Dynare could crash in some cases when trying to display the solution (see !1042 (merged)),

  • Parameter dependence embedded via a steady_state was not taken into account, typically resulting in crashes (see !1241 (merged)).

• dseries class

  • When subtracting a dseries object from a number, the number was instead subtracted from the dseries object (link).

• DSGE-VAR models

  • Dynare crashed when estimation encountered non-finite values in the Jacobian at the steady state (see !1190 (merged)),

  • The presence of a constant was not considered for degrees of freedom computation of the Gamma function used during the posterior computation; due to only affecting the constant term, results should be be unaffected, except for model_comparison when comparing models with and without (see !1212 (closed)).

• Estimation command

  • In contrast to what was stated in the manual, the confidence interval size conf_sig for forecast without MCMC was 0.6 by default instead of 0.9 (see #338 (closed)),

  • Calling estimation after identification could lead to crashes (see #675 (closed)),

  • When using recursive estimation/forecasting and setting some elements of nobs to be larger than the number of observations T in the data, oo_recursive_ contained additional cell entries that simply repeated the results obtained for oo_recursive_T,

  • Computation of Bayesian smoother could crash for larger models when requesting forecast or filtered_variables,

  • Geweke convergence diagnostics were not computed on the full MCMC chain when the load_mh_file option was used,

  • The Geweke convergence diagnostics always used the default taper_steps and geweke_interval (see !1341 (closed)),

  • Bayesian IRFs (bayesian_irfs option) could be displayed in an unreadable way when they move from negative to positive values,

  • If bayesian_irfs was requested when mh_replic was too low to compute HPDIs, plotting was crashing (see !1326 (merged)),

  • The x-axis value in oo_.prior_density for the standard deviation and correlation of measurement errors was written into a field mearsurement_errors_* instead of measurement_errors_* (see !1353 (merged)),

  • Using a user-defined mode_compute crashed estimation,

  • Option mode_compute=10 did not work with infinite prior bounds,

  • The posterior variances and covariances computed by moments_varendo were wrong for very large models due to a matrix erroneously being filled up with zeros (see !1423 (closed)),

  • Using the forecast option with loglinear erroneously added the unlogged steady state (see !852 (closed)),

  • When using the loglinear option the check for the presence of a constant was erroneously based on the unlogged steady state (see !852 (closed)),

  • Estimation of observation_trends was broken as the trends specified as a function of deep parameters were not correctly updated during estimation (see !852 (closed)),

  • When using analytic_derivation, the parameter values were not set before testing whether the steady state file changes parameter values, leading to subsequent crashes,

  • If the steady state of an initial parameterization did not solve, the observation equation could erroneously feature no constant when the use_calibration option was used (see !698 (merged)),

  • When computing posterior moments, Dynare falsely displayed that moment computations are skipped, although the computation was performed correctly,

  • If conditional_variance_decomposition was requested, although all variables contain unit roots, Dynare crashed instead of providing an error message (see !691 (merged)),

  • Computation of the posterior parameter distribution was erroneously based on more draws than specified (there was one additional draw for every Markov chain),

  • The estimation option lyapunov=fixed_point was broken,

  • Computation of filtered_vars with only one requested step crashed Dynare,

  • Option kalman_algo=3 was broken with non-diagonal measurement error (see !1235 (closed)),

  • When using the diffuse Kalman filter with missing observations, an additive factor log(2*pi) was missing in the last iteration step (see !1235 (closed)),

  • Passing of the MaxFunEvals and InitialSimplexSize options to mode_compute=8 was broken,

  • Bayesian forecasts contained initial conditions and had the wrong length in both plots and stored variables,

  • Filtered variables obtained with mh_replic=0, ML, or calibrated_smoother were padded with zeros at the beginning and end and had the wrong length in stored variables,

  • Computation of smoothed measurement errors in Bayesian estimation was broken,

  • The selected_variables_only option (mh_replic=0, ML, or calibrated_smoother) returned wrong results for smoothed, updated, and filtered variables (see #1161 (closed)),

  • Combining the selected_variables_only option with forecasts obtained using mh_replic=0, ML, or calibrated_smoother leaded to crashes,

  • oo_.UpdatedVariables was only filled when the filtered_vars option was specified (see #1366 (closed)),

  • When using Bayesian estimation with filtered_vars, but without smoother, then oo_.FilteredVariables erroneously also contained filtered variables at the posterior mean as with mh_replic=0 (see !738 (merged)),

  • Running an MCMC a second time in the same folder with a different number of iterations could result in crashes due to the loading of stale files,

  • Results displayed after Bayesian estimation when not specifying the smoother option were based on the parameters at the mode from mode finding instead of the mean parameters from the posterior draws. This affected the smoother results displayed, but also calls to subsequent command relying on the parameters stored in M_.params like stoch_simul,

  • The content of oo_.posterior_std after Bayesian estimation was based on the standard deviation at the posterior mode, not the one from the MCMC, this was not consistent with the reference manual (see #1013 (closed)),

  • When the initialization of an MCMC run failed, the metropolis.log file was locked, requiring a restart of Matlab to restart estimation (see !1155 (merged)),

  • If the posterior mode was right at the corner of the prior bounds, the initialization of the MCMC erroneously crashed (see !1155 (merged)),

  • If the number of dropped draws via mh_drop coincided with the number of draws in a _mh'-file, oo_.posterior.metropolis.mean and oo_.posterior.metropolis.Variance were NaN (see !1297 (merged)).

• Estimation and calibrated smoother

  • When using observation_trends with the prefilter option, the mean shift due to the trend was not accounted for (see !852 (closed)),

  • When using first_obs>1, the higher trend starting point of observation_trends was not taken into account, leading, among other things, to problems in recursive forecasting (see !852 (closed)),

  • The diffuse Kalman smoother was crashing if the forecast error variance matrix became singular (see 42ecfa38),

  • The multivariate Kalman smoother provided incorrect state estimates when all data for one observation are missing (see !1324 (merged)),

  • The multivariate diffuse Kalman smoother provided incorrect state estimates when the Finf matrix becomes singular (see !1324 (merged)),

  • The univariate diffuse Kalman filter was crashing if the initial covariance matrix of the nonstationary state vector is singular (see !1324 (merged)),

• Forecasts

  • In contrast to what is stated in the manual, the confidence interval size conf_sig was 0.6 by default instead of 0.9 (see #338 (closed)),

  • Forecasting with exogenous deterministic variables provided wrong decision rules, yielding wrong forecasts (see #711 (closed)),

  • Forecasting with exogenous deterministic variables crashed when the periods option was not explicitly specified (see !1325 (merged)),

  • Option forecast when used with initval was using the initial values in the initval block and not the steady state computed from these initial values as the starting point of forecasts (see !692 (merged)).

• Global Sensitivity Analysis

  • Sensitivity with ML estimation could result in crashes,

  • Option mc must be forced if neighborhood_width is used (see e32cbf62),

  • Fixed dimension of stock_logpo and stock_ys (see a44b3fbf),

  • Incomplete variable initialization could lead to crashes with prior_range=1.

• Identification

  • Identification did not correctly pass the lik_init option, requiring the manual setting of options_.diffuse_filter=1 in case of unit roots ,

  • Testing identification of standard deviations as the only parameters to be estimated with ML leaded to crashes,

  • Automatic increase of the lag number for autocovariances when the number of parameters is bigger than the number of non-zero moments was broken,

  • When using ML, the asymptotic Hessian was not computed (see !1238 (merged)),

  • Checking for singular values when the eigenvectors contained only one column did not work correctly (see !1238 (merged)),

• Model comparison

  • Selection of the modifiedharmonicmean estimator was broken (see !1015 (merged)).

• Optimal Simple Rules

  • When covariances were specified, variables that only entered with their variance and no covariance term obtained a wrong weight, resulting in wrong results (see !767 (merged)),

  • Results reported for stochastic simulations after osr were based on the last parameter vector encountered during optimization, which does not necessarily coincide with the optimal parameter vector (see !767 (merged)),

  • Using only one (co)variance in the objective function resulted in crashes (see !767 (merged)),

  • For models with non-stationary variables the objective function was computed wrongly (see !767 (merged)).

• Ramsey policy

  • If a Lagrange multiplier appeared in the model with a lead or a lag of more than one period, the steady state could be wrong (see #633 (closed)).

  • When using an external steady state file, incorrect steady states could be accepted,

  • When using an external steady state file with more than one instrument, Dynare crashed (see !696 (merged)),

  • When using an external steady state file and running stoch_simul after ramsey_planner, an incorrect steady state was used,

  • When the number of instruments was not equal to the number of omitted equations, Dynare crashed with a cryptic message (see !1241 (merged)),

  • The planner_objective accepted varexo, but ignored them for computations,

• Shock decomposition

  • Did not work with the parameter_set=calibration option if an estimated_params block is present (link),

  • Crashed after MLE (see !1220 (closed)).

• Perfect foresight models

  • The perfect foresight solver could accept a complex solution instead of continuing to look for a real-valued one (see #896 (closed)),

  • The initval_file command only accepted column and not row vectors (link),

  • The initval_file command did not work with Excel files (link),

  • Deterministic simulations with one boundary condition crashed in solve_one_boundary due to a missing underscore when passing options_.simul.maxit,

  • Deterministic simulation with exogenous variables lagged by more than one period crashed (see #617 (closed)),

  • Termination criterion maxit was hard-coded for solve_algo=0 and could no be changed,

  • When using block/bytecode, relational operators could not be enforced (see #439 (closed)),

  • When using block some exceptions were not properly handled, leading to code crashes (see #1245 (closed)),

  • Using periods=1 crashed the solver (bug only partially fixed) (see #1205 (closed)).

• Smoothing

  • The univariate Kalman smoother returned wrong results when used with correlated measurement error (see !1235 (closed)),

  • The diffuse smoother sometimes returned linear combinations of the smoothed stochastic trend estimates instead of the original trend estimates (see #1312 (closed)).

• Perturbation reduced form

  • In contrast to what is stated in the manual, the results of the unconditional variance decomposition were only stored in oo_.gamma_y(nar+2), not in oo_.variance_decomposition,

  • Dynare could crash when the steady state could not be computed when using the loglinear option,

  • Using bytcode when declared exogenous variables were not used in the model leaded to crashes in stochastic simulations (see #841 (closed)),

  • Displaying decision rules involving lags of auxiliary variables of type 0 (leads>1) crashed (see #1367 (closed)).

  • The relative_irf option resulted in wrong output at order>1 as it implicitly relies on linearity (see !740 (merged)).

• Displaying of the MH-history with the internals command crashed if parameter names did not have same length (see caa6d5d9).

• Dynare crashed when the user-defined steady state file returned an error code, but not an conformable-sized steady state vector (see !1001 (merged)).

• Due to a bug in mjdgges.mex unstable parameter draws with eigenvalues up to 1+1e-6 could be accepted as stable for the purpose of the Blanchard-Kahn conditions, even if qz_criterium<1 (see e3fbefc6).

• The use_dll option on Octave for Windows required to pass a compiler flag at the command line, despite the manual stating this was not necessary (see #1314 (closed)).

• Dynare crashed for models with block option if the Blanchard-Kahn conditions were not satisfied instead of generating an error message.

• The verbose option did not work with model(block).

• When falsely specifying the model(linear) for nonlinear models, incorrect steady states were accepted instead of aborting (see !726 (merged)).

• The STEADY_STATE operator called on model local variables (so-called pound variables) did not work as expected.

• The substring operator in macro-processor was broken. The characters of the substring could be mixed with random characters from the memory space.

• Block decomposition could sometimes cause the preprocessor to crash.

• A bug when external functions were used in model local variables that were contained in equations that required auxiliary variable/equations led to crashes of Matlab (see 2ab8e2a1).

• Sampling from the prior distribution for an inverse gamma II distribution when prior_trunc>0 could result in incorrect sampling (see #997 (closed)).

• Sampling from the prior distribution for a uniform distribution when prior_trunc>0 was ignoring the prior truncation (see #997 (closed)).