DIGNAR-19 Toolkit
The IMF has created an extension of the Debt Investment Growth and Natural Resources (DIGNAR) model (Melina, Yang and Zanna, 2016), to facilitate quantitative macroeconomic assessments and policy scenario analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic. The original DSGE model was developed for resource-rich developing economies to help assess the effects of public investment on growth and debt sustainability. DIGNAR-19, as the IMF model is called, is now available online as a toolkit.
The toolkit is particularly useful for officials at ministries of finance, debt agencies, central banks, and other government agencies responsible for providing advice or implementing macroeconomic analysis of debt policies.
The DIGNAR-19 toolkit is an application designed to facilitate the use of the DIGNAR-19 model by economists with little to no knowledge of Matlab and Dynare, via a user-friendly Excel-based interface. The framework allows the user to incorporate shocks associated with the pandemic and produces macroeconomic scenarios with an emphasis on GDP growth and government debt, conditional on domestic and supranational policy responses, while benefiting from an internally consistent setup delivered by a general equilibrium approach.
The toolkit comprises three tools—the simulation tool, the graphing tool, and the realism tool—that translate the contents of an Excel input file into instructions for Matlab/Dynare programs. This minimizes the user's interactions with these programs, largely executed behind the scenes. Outputs are saved in a separate Excel file that users can visualize in customizable charts. The toolkit requires that Excel, Matlab, and Dynare are installed on the user’s computer.
Access the DIGNAR-19 Toolkit