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A Practical Guide to Parallelization in Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Jesús Fernández-Villaverde
  • David Zarruk Valencia

Abstract

This guide provides a practical introduction to parallel computing in economics. After a brief introduction to the basic ideas of parallelization, we show how to parallelize a prototypical application in economics using, on CPUs, Julia, Matlab, R, Python, C++-OpenMP, Rcpp–OpenMP, and C++-MPI, and, on GPUs, CUDA and OpenACC. We provide code that the user can download and fork, present comparative results, and explain the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. We conclude with some additional remarks about alternative approaches.

Suggested Citation

  • Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & David Zarruk Valencia, 2018. "A Practical Guide to Parallelization in Economics," NBER Working Papers 24561, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24561
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Joao F. Cocco, 2005. "Consumption and Portfolio Choice over the Life Cycle," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 491-533.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Chase Coleman & Spencer Lyon & Lilia Maliar & Serguei Maliar, 2021. "Matlab, Python, Julia: What to Choose in Economics?," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 58(4), pages 1263-1288, December.
    2. Julien Albertini & Stéphane Moyen, 2024. "A General and Efficient Method for Solving Regime-Switching DSGE Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 64(6), pages 3645-3682, December.
    3. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Pablo Guerron-Quintana, 2020. "Uncertainty Shocks and Business Cycle Research," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 37, pages 118-166, August.
    4. Bognanni, Mark & Zito, John, 2020. "Sequential Bayesian inference for vector autoregressions with stochastic volatility," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    5. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Galo Nuño & Jesse Perla, 2024. "Taming the Curse of Dimensionality: Quantitative Economics with Deep Learning," NBER Working Papers 33117, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Yasuo Hirose & Takeki Sunakawa, 2019. "Review of Solution and Estimation Methods for Nonlinear Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Models with the Zero Lower Bound," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 70(1), pages 51-104, March.
    7. Bluhm, Benjamin & Cutura, Jannic, 2020. "Econometrics at scale: Spark up big data in economics," SAFE Working Paper Series 266, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    8. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, 2020. "Simple Rules for a Complex World with Arti?cial Intelligence," PIER Working Paper Archive 20-010, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    9. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Pablo A. Guerrón-Quintana, 2021. "Estimating DSGE Models: Recent Advances and Future Challenges," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 229-252, August.
    10. Mingzhuo Deng & Pablo A. Guerron-Quintana & Lewis Tseng, 2023. "Parallel Computation of Sovereign Default Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 62(3), pages 1047-1085, October.
    11. Aur'elien Ouattara & Matthieu Bult'e & Wan-Ju Lin & Philipp Scholl & Benedikt Veit & Christos Ziakas & Florian Felice & Julien Virlogeux & George Dikos, 2021. "Scalable Econometrics on Big Data -- The Logistic Regression on Spark," Papers 2106.10341, arXiv.org.
    12. Peri, Alessandro, 2020. "A hardware approach to value function iteration," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    13. Duarte, Victor & Duarte, Diogo & Fonseca, Julia & Montecinos, Alexis, 2020. "Benchmarking machine-learning software and hardware for quantitative economics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    14. Jeppe Druedahl, 2021. "A Guide on Solving Non-convex Consumption-Saving Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 58(3), pages 747-775, October.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques
    • C68 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computable General Equilibrium Models
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

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