MacroSoft

This Windows software provides you with the opportunity to build international macroeconomic models "on the fly". Selecting from among various exchange rate, capital mobility, and price expectations assumptions, you gain hands-on experience with the IS-LM-BOP and aggregate demand/aggregate supply models featured in Dornbusch, Fischer, and Startz Macroeconomics, Eighth Edition. MacroSoft, with its dial-in slider mechanism, provides real-time responsiveness of curves to changes in the various parameters of each model. The software presents a deep parameters approach, allowing you to change a wider variety of parameters underlying the behavioral equations of the model than any other software currently on the market.

Want to observe the effect of labor-augmenting technical change on the Solow growth model? No problem. Simply check the checkbox and watch the aggregate production function change. Prefer to work with a larger money multiplier in the Mundell-Fleming version of the IS-LM-BOP fixed price model? It’s easy with the "adjust parameters" routine. Each time you want to change a parameter, simply select it from a drop-down list box, and the curve affected by that parameter is highlighted in yellow. No more navigating to a separate window to adjust parameters and then returning to the graph window only to find the curve’s position or shape already changed.

MacroSoft allows you to see the action as it happens. By clicking and dragging the slider, you can explore the effects of continuous changes in parameters on each curve in the model. The "experiments" menu item allows you to conduct various comparative statics experiments by changing a wide variety of exogenous variables. Adjustments to new equilibria are automatic and intuitively appealing. You may also plot the time paths of various key variables in the model, such as inflation, unemployment, GDP growth rates, and interest rates. A rescale graph option provides for convenient rescaling of graphs to allow for user-built models that would otherwise drift off the current graph. MacroSoft also allows you to build and archive models for later use with its flexible "user defaults" procedure. Want to return to the factory preset default parameters? It’s quick with an easy menu item selection from the main menu bar.

A CD-ROM version of the software, containing a 32 page user manual, is available now. To purchase the CD call 1- 800 262-4729 and use the following ISBN: 0072480009.