Computational Economics with Python and Julia

National University of Singapore, October 2016

Lecturer: John Stachurski

Support: Matthew McKay

Economists are increasingly adopting modern open source computing environments such as Python and Julia for research and policy analysis.

This workshop will cover the basics of these two languages and their use in computational economics. We assume that participants have basic programming skills but do not know either Python or Julia. We will provide a comparison and overview of these languanges, including set up, installation and some useful libraries.

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

• 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. We will have a trouble shooting session at the start.

Please make sure that you have wireless access.

Notebooks

• AR1 simulation in Julia
• AR1 simulation in Python

Resources

• QuantEcon lectures
• Cheat sheet
• Forum

Get the Files

To access the files in this repositiory, either

• use git, if you know what that is, or

• download the zip file (see top right of page)

Other

Also consider installing

• a modern browser (Chrome / Firefox / Vivaldi)

• a good text editor such as Atom

• Git