The Econ-ARK and HARK: Open Source Tools for Computational Economics

The Economics Algorithmic Repository and toolKit (Econ-ARK) aims to become a focal resource for computational economics. Its first ‘framework,’ the Heterogeneous Agent Resources and Toolkit (HARK), provides a modern, robust, transparent set of tools to solve a class of macroeconomic models whose usefulness has become increasingly apparent both for economic policy and for research purposes, but whose adoption has been limited because the existing literature derives from idiosyncratic, hand-crafted, and often impenetrable legacy code. We expect future Econ-ARK frameworks (e.g., for analysis of the transmission of beliefs through agents’ social networks) will draw heavily on key elements of the existing HARK framework, including the API, the structure, and documentation standards.