Is DSGE a framework?

QFT: The Platonic ideal of a framework.

TL;DR = No.

This pair ([1], [2]) of interesting older Noahpinion (feat. Roger Farmer) pieces showed up on Twitter recently; in [1] Noah Smith opens with:

You often hear defenders of the DSGE [Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium] modeling framework say something like this: "You can't attack DSGE. Its just a framework. You can use it to model anything." But this isn't true. If it were true, we wouldn't have the label "DSGE", we'd just call it "modeling".

I've talked about frameworks many times (see e.g. here, here, here, here, here or here), and while I would agree with Noah's general sentiment, adding two words makes the definition of framework acceptable:

You can use [a framework] to try to model anything.

That is to say your framework should be general enough to tackle any given problem, but not so general that it is consistent with any set of empirical data. This is the idea here:

How can you figure out what a framework is? Imagine you're given an economic question. Now ask yourself if there is something you immediately write down to start solving it. Is there something? That's your framework.

You can start to try to solve it, but it doesn't mean you'll get an answer consistent with empirical data. Or as I mention here:

One way to understand what a framework is is to ask whether the world could behave in a different way in your framework ... Can you build market monetarist model in your framework? It doesn't have to be empirically accurate (the IT framework version is terrible), but you should be able to at least formulate it. If the answer is no, then you don't have a framework -- you have a set of priors.

Also, a framework shouldn't tell you what major phenomenology of the system you are studying is; for example, most of the frameworks here define what a recession is (instead of coming up with methodology to study how they work).

To some degree, DSGE passes these tests. Real Business Cycle (RBC) models as well as New Keynesian (NK) models can be expressed as DSGE models. But there is one test that DSGE fails (or at least fails to the best of my knowledge):

Theoretical frameworks organize well-established empirical and theoretical results. Using that framework allows your model to be consistent with all of that prior art.

DSGE basically encapsulates (or really hangs off of) general equilibrium theory. However, does anyone know what empirical success it captures? This is not the same question as whether DSGE has any empirical success. We are asking for accepted empirical results that were used to build the DSGE framework.

DSGE was originally built as Kydland-Prescott as a foundational model for RBC theory. It wasn't built on accepted empirical results successfully explained by theory. NK added sticky prices -- which aren't observed at the micro level. 

Basically, DSGE doesn't look like it does one of the things a framework is supposed to do: capture prior art that explains empirical successes. So it's not a framework for macroeconomics.