A Nelson-Winter Model of the German Economy

The evolutionary theory proposed by Nelson and Winter (1982) has inspired hundreds of studies related to the model presented in their book. This model has demonstrated the empirical validity of a new theoretical and methodological approach to the background of the U.S. economy and the corresponding data. However, only a few of those related studies aimed at replicating the model and applying it to another economy. This study presents a special implementation of the large, but very special class of Nelson-Winter models that mimics the evolution of the German economy from 1970 to 2004. By and large, the model shows the same behavior reported by Nelson and Winter. Compared to standard econometric models, its performance is far from satisfactory. This is not surprising because important structures such as the market for goods and services are still not implemented in the model.