Online kursus i programmering for økonomer

Together with my colleague Anders Munk-Nielsen, I have developed an online course on programming for economics students. The course is publicly available here.

We believe that programming is an essential skill for all modern economists. Even for models which we can solve analytically, it is useful to look at numerical solutions to improve our understanding. Additionally, there are lots and lots of models which can not be solved analytically. Here numerical solutions on a computer is the only way forward.

The course contains eight exercises introducing you to all the main aspects of the widely used MATLAB platform (available for free for students at KU). Additionally, the course contains some examples where MATLAB is used to solve well-known problems in micro, macro and econometrics. These examples are based on material from the second year courses.

For master level courses, MATLAB is e.g. used in Advanced Microeconometrics and Dynamic Programming.

We hope the course can be of help to some of you. If you complete a couple of the exercises, or even the full course , please help us to improve it further by answering this short survey.

Case Ais on micro and e.g. shows how to solve the consumer’s problem numerically.

Case Bis on econometrics. Data is simulated and the model estimated both in matrix form and with numerical optimization of the likelihood function. 3D graphs allow you obtain a more visual understanding.

Case Cis on macro. An AS-AD model with static inflation expectations is solved and simulated numerically. Given a social welfare function, the optimal parameters in the central bank’s Taylor rule is determined numerically.