A Comparison of Programming Languages in Macroeconomics

(with Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde)

Published in Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, September 2015, 58, 265-273.

We solve the stochastic neoclassical growth model, the workhorse of modern macroeconomics, using C++14, Fortran 2008, Java, Julia, Python, Matlab, Mathematica, and R. We implement the same algorithm, value function iteration, in each of the languages. We report the execution times of the codes in a Mac and in a Windows computer and briefly comment on the strengths and weaknesses of each language.

First draft  : July 2014

Paper

Most Recent Working Paper  (may not be identical to the published version)

Published Version (requires subscription)

Additional Materials

GitHub page containing all codes