Behavioural agent-based economic forecasting in Julia

Welcome to BeforeIT.jl, a Julia implementation of the agent-based model presented in Economic forecasting with an agent-based model, the first ABM matching the performance of traditional economic forecasting tools.

With BeforeIT.jl, you can perform economic forecasting and explore different counterfactual scenarios. Thanks to its modular design, the package is also a great starting point for anyone looking to extend its capabilities or integrate it with other tools.

Developed in Julia, a language known for its efficiency, BeforeIT.jl is both fast and user-friendly, making it accessible whether you’re an expert programmer or just starting out.

Julia installation

To run this software, you will need a working Julia installation on your machine. If you don't have it installed already, simply follow the short instructions available here.

BeforeIT.jl Installation

To install BeforeIT.jl, simply open a Julia REPL by writing julia in your terminal, and then execute the following

using Pkg
Pkg.add("BeforeIT")

Quick example

To check that the installation worked, try running the model in your terminal with

import BeforeIT as Bit

parameters = Bit.AUSTRIA2010Q1.parameters
initial_conditions = Bit.AUSTRIA2010Q1.initial_conditions

T = 20
model = Bit.initialise_model(parameters, initial_conditions, T)
data = Bit.run!(model)

To plot the results of the simulation, you can use the Plots package

using Plots

plot(data.real_gdp)

License

BeforeIT.jl is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 or later (AGPLv3+).

Main developers and maintainers

Other collaborators and contributors

Sebastian Poledna <poledna@iiasa.ac.at>
Marco Benedetti
Claudia Biancotti
Sara Corbo for the logo design
Andrea Gentili for suggesting the name of the pakege
Arnau Quera-Bofarull for help in the deployment of the documentation
Steven Hoekstra for fixing a bug in a script
Peter Reschenhofer for fixing a bug in a script

Citing BeforeIT

A software description of the package is available here. If you found BeforeIT useful for your research, please cite it

@article{glielmo2025beforeit,
  title={BeforeIT. jl: High-Performance Agent-Based Macroeconomics Made Easy},
  author={Glielmo, Aldo and Devetak, Mitja and Meligrana, Adriano and Poledna, Sebastian},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.13267},
  year={2025}
}

and do not hesitate to get in touch to include your extension in the next release of the package and software description.

Disclaimer

This package is an outcome of a research project. All errors are those of the authors. All views expressed are personal views, not those of Bank of Italy.

Reproducibility

The documentation of BeforeIT.jl was built using these direct dependencies,

Status `~/work/BeforeIT.jl/BeforeIT.jl/docs/Project.toml`
  [ca9fcad7] BeforeIT v0.3.0 `~/work/BeforeIT.jl/BeforeIT.jl`
  [e30172f5] Documenter v1.8.1
  [5789e2e9] FileIO v1.16.6
  [98b081ad] Literate v2.20.1
  [91a5bcdd] Plots v1.40.9
  [2913bbd2] StatsBase v0.34.4
  [f3b207a7] StatsPlots v0.15.7

and using this machine and Julia version.

Julia Version 1.10.8
Commit 4c16ff44be8 (2025-01-22 10:06 UTC)
Build Info:
  Official https://julialang.org/ release
Platform Info:
  OS: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
  CPU: 4 × AMD EPYC 7763 64-Core Processor
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LIBM: libopenlibm
  LLVM: libLLVM-15.0.7 (ORCJIT, znver3)
Threads: 2 default, 0 interactive, 1 GC (on 4 virtual cores)

A more complete overview of all dependencies and their versions is also provided.

Status `~/work/BeforeIT.jl/BeforeIT.jl/docs/Manifest.toml`
  [a4c015fc] ANSIColoredPrinters v0.0.1
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Info Packages marked with ⌃ and ⌅ have new versions available. Those with ⌃ may be upgradable, but those with ⌅ are restricted by compatibility constraints from upgrading. To see why use `status --outdated -m`

You can also download the manifest file and the project file.