This repository contains the source code for replicating the results in the paper:
Aguiar, Mark and Manuel Amador (2020): “Self-fulfilling Debt Dilution: Maturity and Multiplicity in Debt Models”.
The authors (Mark Aguiar and Manuel Amador) are grateful for the fantastic research assistance of Stelios Fourakis in writing and testing this code. All remaining errors are the responsibility of the authors.
This repository contains the code to generate the numerical simulation results presented in Section 8 and Appendix E. The present code generates the four plots shown in the two figures contained in Appendix E as well as the corresponding table of moments.
NOTE: The other figures in the paper are not the result of this numerical simulation, and were directly obtained from closed-form formulas using the parameter values specified in the caption for each figure.
An up-to-date version of this repository can be found in:
https://github.com/manuelamador/Self_Fulfilling_Debt_Dilution_AER_2020
The folder structure is as follows:
Code: contains all of the julia source code necessary for replicationOutput: contains the output files from the simulationsFigures: contains the generated figuresMoments: contains the moments of each simulationPolicies: contains the policies for each simulationModels/Savings: contains the model elements for a savings simulationModels/Borrowing: contains the model elements for a borrowing simulation
The code is in Julia: https://julialang.org/
The main source file is ReplicateAll.jl. This script runs the simulations for
both the borrowing and the saving equilibrium and generates the moments
and figures.
WARNING: You'll need the following Julia packages installed:
Parameters,
SparseArrays,
SpecialFunctions,
LinearAlgebra,
Distributions,
QuadGK,
DelimitedFiles,
CSV,
PGFPlotsX
WARNING: Before running this script, make sure you have the appropriate directory structure shown above.
WARNING: Make sure that you allow Julia to use multiple threads:
https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/parallel-computing/
WARNING: For the figures, you need a working latex installation (see
https://kristofferc.github.io/PGFPlotsX.jl/stable/).
In case you do not
have one, comment out the calls to makeFigures in the ReplicateAll.jl
script in lines 57 and 70 before running the script.
Open a terminal. Make sure that your working directory is Code. If not, change
the working directory to the Code subdirectory. Start julia and use the
following command at the julia REPL prompt:
julia> include("ReplicateAll.jl")
Parameters.jl contains the parameters used for the simulations.
The figures shown in the paper are saved in the Output/Figures directory:
pol_S_plot.pdf: Corresponds to panel (a) of the figure "Simulation Results: Policy Functions"pol_B_plot.pdf: Corresponds to panel (b) of the figure "Simulation Results: Policy Functions"price_S_plot.pdf: Corresponds to panel (a) of the figure "Simulation Results: Price Functions"price_B_plot.pdf: Corresponds to panel (b) of the figure "Simulation Results: Price Functions"
The function makeFigures defined in makeFigures.jl generates these figures using as an
input the computation results stored in Output/Models and Output/Policies.
The moments used to construct the table in the paper are saved in the
Output/Moments directory. The corresponding moment files are:
mat_20.0_savings_moments.csv: Contains the moments for the savings equilibrium.mat_20.0_borrowing_moments.csv: Contains the moments for the borrowing equilibrium.
The functions save_policy_moments_savings and save_policy_moments_borrowing
defined in PolicyAndMoments.jl use previous computations to simulate the
model and compute and save the moments.
Each moment file contains two columns. The first represents the moments using the full sample. The second column represents the moments using excluding the disaster states. The moments are:
-
mean A' over Y no default:
E[A'/(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
mean market value over Y:
E[q(y,A')*A'/(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
mean A over Y no default:
E[A/(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
mean A over Y:
E[A/(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough up until today. -
def Rate:
E[d]when the country has been out of default long enough up until today. -
mean Spread:
E[(1+r(y,A'))^4-(1+r)^4]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
vol Spread:
SD[(1+r(y,A'))^4-(1+r)^4]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
vol C over Y:
SD[ln(c)]/V[ln(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
vol TB:
SD[(y+m-c)/(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
cor TB with Log Y:
corr[(y+m-c)/(y+m),ln(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
cor Spread with Log Y:
corr[(1+r(y,A'))^4-(1+r)^4,ln(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
cor Spread with A / Y:
corr[(1+r(y,A'))^4-(1+r)^4,A'/(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today. -
cor Spread with TB:
corr[(1+r(y,A'))^4-(1+r)^4, (y+m-c)/(y+m)]when the country has been out of default long enough and does not default today.
NOTE: the code is written where A represents assets. The paper instead uses
the convention and writes the relevant moments and figures using debt, b = -a.
So the relevant moments need to change sign. Note also that A' represents
end of period assets.
The code was tested in Amazon Web Services (AWS) using a c4.4xlarge linux instance with 16 virtual CPUs and approximately 32GB of RAM.
The main part of the code (the computation of the equilibria for the benchmark maturity of 1/20.0) ran under 1h40minutes. The entire code including the additional computations with additional maturities ran just under 17h.