1. Global Sensitivity Analysis and Uncertainty Quantification

These tools answer two related questions about a model whose inputs (parameters and, where relevant, shocks) are uncertain:

  • Uncertainty quantification (UQ)how uncertain are the model’s outputs (steady states, impulse responses, moments, forecasts, decompositions) given that uncertainty? This is forward propagation, covered on the Uncertainty Quantification page.

  • Global sensitivity analysis (GSA)which inputs are responsible for that output uncertainty (or for some qualitative behaviour of the model)? RISE offers two complementary GSA approaches: Monte Carlo filtering – map the input space into the region that produces a given behaviour and see which parameters separate “behave” from “non-behave” – and the high-dimensional model representation – fit a low-order surrogate of the input-to-output map, from which variance-based (Sobol-type) sensitivity indices and a cheap emulator follow.

  • Surrogates – the polynomial-chaos emulator fits a fast stand-in for an expensive function of the parameters (typically the log posterior), with the polynomial basis derived from the priors; Sobol’ indices come out of the fit analytically. This is also the foundation of the surrogate-accelerated estimation roadmap.

All three rely on sampling the input space; RISE uses the posterior sampler after estimation, draws from the prior, or quasi-Monte-Carlo low-discrepancy sequences (Sobol, Halton, …) over a calibration range.