Modern Methods in Computational Economics

A Workshop in HCMC

November 2016

John Stachurski

Economists are increasingly using modern open source computing environments such as Python and Julia.

This workshop will cover the basics of these modern programming languages, and how you can use them for research and policy analysis in economics.

We assume that participants know some economics but do not know Python. The level of programming will be introductory.

Instructions

• Before coming, please install Anaconda Python on your laptop

  • Python + the main scientific libraries
  • Free from http://continuum.io/downloads
  • Choose the Python 3.5 version
  • Make it your default Python distribution

• Optionally, you might also like to install Julia

  • Follow instructions for your OS
  • Some extra info here if you need it

Please be sure to bring your laptop to the workshop.

Please make sure that you have wireless access.

Notebooks

• First steps
• Application: Supply and Demand
• Application: Equilibrium
• AR1 simulation in Julia
• AR1 simulation in Python

Useful Links

• QuantEcon lectures
• Cheat sheet
• [AWS server] [link to be added]

Extra Software

Optionally, consider installing

• a modern browser (e.g., Chrome / Firefox / Vivaldi)
• a good text editor such as Atom
• Git