The Macsim Project General Economic Description

MACSIM is a package designed to teach international macroeconomics to post-graduate students. It is based on a multinational model, linking six countries: France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden, and a summarized Rest of the World. Each country model follows the same format, with estimated equations, and sometimes set coefficients, to allow the same mechanisms across countries.Its financial elements allow alternative formulations and options. Interest rates can be real exogenous or follow a Taylor rule, exchange rates can be exogenous, follow PPP an uncovered interest rate parity. Participation to European Monetary Union can be assumed, and lead to common behaviors.Trade flows between countries (and the rest of the world) are fully formalized, using a method which guarantees automatic equilibrium.The system is integrated into a user-friendly package, providing graphs, on-line help and tools for the analysis of results. It allows the teacher to use pre-established courses (with the help of a manual) or build his own.In our presentation, we shall first describe the model. We shall explicit the consequences of dissymetric shocks (supply and demand) and their sensitivity to the rules chosen and the participation of the country to EMU. Finally, we shall show interactively the main features of the package.