Econ-ARK
NumFOCUS Sponsored Project since 2017The aim of the Econ-ARK project is to make it easier for social scientists to do ‘structural modeling’ of economic choice behavior by providing a well-documented, open source codebase containing the core techniques in a way that can be relatively easily adapted to address many different questions in both macro- and microeconomics. ‘Structural’ modeling of economic choices aims to identify the logic or reasons behind observed behavior, rather than just describing that behavior statistically.
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Industry
Higher Education Research & Teaching
Language
Python
Features
Modeling
Numerical Computing
Subject Area Libraries
The Econ-ARK originated as an initiative of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with the aim of improving economists’ ability to model consumers’ financial decisions. It is being used for a number of ongoing research projects at CFPB. It also received early support and sponsorship from the International Monetary Fund, which is interested in improving its ability to model the consequences of heterogeneity and inequality across households, especially as they interact with public policy and social insurance programs. The Econ-ARK team has also given workshops at the Federal Reserve, at the CESifo conference, at the Computation in Economics and Finance conference, and at a joint conference sponsored by the US Treasury’s Office of FInancial Research, the Bank of England, and the Sloan Foundation; interactions with other central banks and policy institutions are ongoing, and researchers at several of these institutions are exploring the use of the toolkit for both policy and research purposes.
