DSGE modeling at policymaking institutions: progress and prospects

A conference held at the Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C., December 2-3, 2005, sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Research Forum on Monetary Policy. The Forum comprises the European Central Bank (ECB), the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), the Center for Financial Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt, and the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University. Its purpose is to encourage research relevant for monetary policymaking in interdependent economies. ; The conference has two main objectives: to consider applications of the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models constructed at some policymaking institutions and to assess what must be done to make such models useful in practical policymaking. There will be papers by staff members from the IMF as well as the ECB, the FRB, the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of Japan, and the National Bank of Sweden--some written with outside coauthors. In addition, there will be a paper by Christopher Sims, which will address general methodological issues, including data coherence. A special issue of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control will be devoted to papers from the conference.