This paper describes SIMANN, a Fortran and GAUSS implementation of the simulated annealing algorithm. The Fortran code was used in "Global Optimization of Statistical Functions with Simulated Annealing" (Goffe, Ferrier, and Rogers 1994). In that paper, simulated annealing was found to be...

Optimization algorithms must be among the most common numerical methods used by economists. Yet, there is surprisingly little guidance on choosing the appropriate one. This problem is most notable with regard to conventional versus global optimizers. Typically, a global optimizer is used when a...