Abstract for:Multi-Country MacroLab Network

We are a team of modelers from Norway and Ukraine, and we have a vision of a multi-country, macroeconomic modeling network using a shared modeling template. We are transforming an SD model originally designed for teaching macroeconomics into one that can be used in Ukraine for policy analysis. This has required developing a systematic way to transform the original US-focused teaching model into one that describes a quite different economy and combines research and policy analysis with macroeconomics instruction.  The result is the MacroLab Template that can facilitate first drafts of models representing diverse macroeconomic structures and parameters. The template is not theory-dependent. At the top layer of the model, the template channels macro-accounting information into financial transactions between multi-dimensional sectors of households, firms, governments, and banks, as well as foreign markets. Within sub-models, demand and supply decisions respond to the top-layer financial conditions (stocks) and drive the spending (flows). Those sub-model decisions depend on behavioral equations that are open to a variety of theoretical formulations. Modelers retain the freedom to formulate their own hypotheses about demand and/or supply decision-making in specific countries; their hypotheses are not constrained by the template. We hope to jumpstart conversations with interested modelers from several countries.