Model Transfer in Macroeconomics. Policymaking Institutions, Multi-Country Models, and Computers

The literature on the history of large-scale macroeconometric models developed at policymaking institutions emphasizes materiality (models as "artefacts", resulting from "bricolage"; Halsmayer, 2017). Moreover, it also stresses "embeddedness", that is, every modelling choice (from the level of disaggregation, theoretical apparatus, empirical strategy, etc.) is context-specific to these institutions (e.g., Goutsmedt et al., 2023). Thus, transferring such artefacts from an institution to another seems a complex and perilous operation. And yet, this is what modellers following a decentralized approach to multi-country modelling do (Acosta et al., 2023). Our communication starts by outlining the intellectual and material obstacles to model transfer in the domain of multi-country modelling, relying on the case study of the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG II) of the European Commission (Rancan and Sergi, forthcoming). We document how intellectual obstacles to model transfer resulted mostly from the fact that European macroeconomists did not yet share the same representation of the economy. However, we show that, during the 1970s and the 1980s, material obstacles (most specifically, the difficulties related to the type of computer tools used) played a more crucial role in making model transfers possible (or impossible). This leads us to look at a second case study, documenting the role played by a specific computer tool (the "Dynare" package) in facilitating model transfer in macroeconomics from the early 1990s on (Cherrier et al., 2023). We document how the crafting of Dynare (itself a case of model transfer from engineering and computer science) addressed existing computational and material issues for the circulation of macroeconomic models across academia and policymaking institutions. References Acosta, J., Cherrier, B., Claveau, F., Fontan, C., Goutsmedt, Sergi, F., 2023. Six Decades of Economic Research at the Bank of England. History of Political Economy, in press. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-10956544. Cherrier, B., Saïdi, A., Sergi, F., 2023. "Write Your Model Almost as You Would on Paper and Dynare Will Take Care of the Rest!": Dynare and the History of Macroeconomics. OEconomia, 23(3). Pre-print: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4531026. Goutsmedt, A., Sergi, F., Cherrier, B., Acosta, J., Claveau, F., and Fontan, C, forthcoming. To Change or not to Change: The Evolution of Forecasting Models at the Bank of England. Journal of Economic Methodology. Working paper version: https://aurelien-goutsmedt.com/publication/model-boe/. Halsmayer, V., 2017. A Model to "Make Decisions and Take Actions": Leif Johansen's Multisector Growth Model, Computerized Macroeconomic Planning, and Resilient Infrastructures for Policymaking. History of Political Economy, 49(Supplement): 158-186. Rancan, A. and Sergi, F., forthcoming. Modelling Europe. A History of Multi-Country Models at the European Commission (1970-2005). London: Palgrave.