Building the WiNDC National Data
August 15, 2025
Today I am going to discuss the build process for the WiNDC National data. I will demonstrate taking the data from the raw Supply/Use tables and transforming it into the final National data product. Read more
WiNDC.jl Clarifying Sets and Parameters
August 08, 2025
In this post I would like to clarify the concepts of sets, parameters and elements in WiNDC.jl. These terms are borrowed from GAMS and have larger mathematical meaning, but it’s not clear what they mean in the context of WiNDC.jl. Read more
Structuring data for API access and WiNDC.jl
August 01, 2025
How should we be storing and using WiNDC and economic data? We currently use sparse arrays to store sets and parameters. However, this approach means every model is tightly coupled to the specific application, for example the National module has fewer parameters than the Household module. This makes it difficult write generic code that can be used across modules. In this post I discuss a new data model that is more flexible and can be used across all modules. Read more
Getting Started with Julia
July 25, 2025
This week the USDA announced the closure of the south building with the (potential) intention of distributing employees to other states. This action will inevitably cause a severe reduction in staffing meaning a lot of experienced economists will soon be unemployed. Out of respect for my colleagues, I am going to use this blog post to share resources for those who want to learn Julia and want to use it for economic modeling. I hope this will help those who are looking for new opportunities. Read more
Closed Economy Model with Monopoly in the X Sector
July 23, 2025
This example is a conversion of the Markusen M51 model into Julia. This is a standard two-good, two-factor, closed-economy general-equilibrium model. Activities are X, Y and W (welfare or utility). Factors of production are called unskilled and skilled labor. Unskilled labor is typically called L with a price of PW or just W, and skilled labor is called S with a price of PZ or just Z. PU is the price of a unit of utility (the value of the unit expenditure function). Read more