About

The goal of the Hetergeneous-Agent Computing (HAC) toolkit is to design and implement a modular system for solving and estimating heterogeneous-agent general-equilibrium models. Agents are intended to be heterogeneous in a number of ways -- wealth levels, permanent income, preference parameters, or even "levels of rationality" (eg, including both "naive" and "optimizing" agents if needed for a particular question).

The toolkit is initially based on Chris' dynamic stochastic optimization notes. Chris has built a few heterogeneous-agent macroeconomic general equilibrium models using this modular "bottom up" approach. "The Distribution of Wealth and the Marginal Propensity to Consume" is a good example, and we believe these models provide good templates for modular creation of many varieties of this type of model. There are plans to greatly expand the number and types of markets and the heterogeneity of agents which might be possible in such a model while still remaining tractable.

A number of tertiary projects are implied by this effort, including the need for simple, easy, off-the-shelf frameworks for citeable code contributions -- see the Participation and E-Publication page for more details on these exciting possibilities.