David Zarruk Valencia

Parallel computing opens the door to solving and estimating much richer models in Economics. From dynamic optimization problems with high dimensionality to structural estimation with complex data, readily-available and economical parallel computing allows researchers to tackle problems in Economics that were beyond the realm of possibility just a decade ago. This paper describes the basics of parallel computing for economists, reviews widely-used implementation routines in Julia, Python, R, Matlab, C++ (OpenMP and MPI) and CUDA and compares performance gains using, as a test bed a standard life-cycle problem such as those in many models in macro, labor, and other fields. 

This paper characterizes the general equilibrium outcomes of the tertiary education market in a context where borrowing constraints bind, there is a two-tier college system operating under monopolistic competition in which colleges differ by quality offered and returns to education depend on school quality. The paper shows that a widening of the gap in quality supplied by tertiary education institutions can be a by-product of subsidized student loan policies and illustrates the main results through a numerical exercise applied to the case of Colombia, which underwent a rapid expansion in the supply of subsidized student loans during the past decade.