Macroeconomic model comparison projects have helped produce some very influential insights such as the Taylor rule. However, they have been infrequent and costly, because they require the input of many teams of researchers and multiple meetings to obtain a limited set of comparative findings. This paper provides a new comparative approach to model-based research and policy analysis that enables individual researchers to conduct model comparisons easily, frequently, at low cost and on a large scale. Using this approach a model archive is built that includes many well-known empirically estimated models that may be used for quantitative analysis of monetary and fiscal stabilization policies. A computational platform is created that allows straightforward comparisons of models' implications. Its application is illustrated by comparing different monetary and fiscal policies across selected models. Researchers can easily include new models in the data base and compare the effects of novel extensions to established benchmarks thereby fostering a comparative instead of insular approach to model development.
Keywords:Macroeconomic Models, Model Uncertainty, Policy Rules, Robustness, Monetary Policy, Fiscal Policy, Model Comparison. JEL-Codes: E52, E58, E62, F41 * We are grateful for very helpful advice by John B. Taylor and his support for the model comparison initiative. Furthermore, we want to thank those model developers who supplied the original code for simulating their models, in particular, John B. Taylor, John C. Williams, Christopher Erceg, Frank Smets, Raf Wouters, Michael Kiley, Rochelle Edge, JeanPhillipe Laforte, Marco Ratto, Werner Roeger, Guenter Coenen, Stephan Laseen, Athanasios Orphanides, Keith Kuester and Thomas Laubach. In other cases the documentation in the published paper or on the authors' website was sufficient to replicate the analysis without the original files. We are also grateful for helpful comments by Michel Juillard and Frank Smets. All remaining errors are our own.
