CGE Training Course with Advanced Topics

Introduction

The Centre of Policy Studies (CoPS), Victoria University, Melbourne is offering a 5-day CGE training course with advanced topics, hosted by Wageningen Social and Economic Research (WSER), The Hague. The course is co-sponsored by the Brightspace Project.

This course will be valuable for people who

• are novices in CGE but would like to acquire familiarity with how CGE simulations are conducted and what they can deliver; or
• have CGE experience but would like to enhance their skills in simulation design, computation and interpretation by working with some of the world’s most experienced CGE practitioners.

The focus of the course is CGE as a flexible tool for policy application. Participants will find that CGE modeling can be applied quickly to give ballpark answers to questions as they arise, or in a more measured way to provide in-depth answers that will stand up to critical public scrutiny. Participants will see that with ingenuity, they can adapt available CGE models to throw light on an enormous and evolving array of questions concerning the environment, labor markets, sub-national regions, trade and supply chains, natural disasters, pandemics, terrorism and military conflict.

Core content & model

The course will be centred on GlobeTERM which is part of the family of models whose origins can be traced back to Australia's ORANI model and include GTAP and MAGNET. GlobeTERM is supported by a database identifying 74 industries in 160 countries. With additional data, a country can be disaggregated into sub-national regions, e.g. NUTS-2 regions for European countries, and states and counties for the U.S. Participants will use a version of GlobeTERM focusing on Europe.

The course will consist of:

• hands-on computational exercises; and
• lectures and discussions.

In the hands-on exercises, participants will compute GlobeTERM solutions and interpret their results. The exercises and instructor-assistance will be tailored to the interests and experience of participants.

The lecture sessions will cover central required topics and advanced topics. The central required topics will include

• the structure and database of a CGE model;
• solving a CGE model in GEMPACK; and
• interpreting CGE results.

Advanced topics

The advanced topics will be chosen with the interests of the participants in mind. The topics will include a selection of:

• competition policy, imperfect competition, excess profits and income distribution in CGE;
• sticky-real wages and excess capacity to facilitate short-run CGE applications;
• finance, banking, foreign assets and liabilities and the balance of payments in a CGE framework;
• using CGE to understand implications of FDI;
• validation and what to say to sceptics who won’t believe anything that is not supported by econometrics;
• the relationship between a single country model and global models such GTAP and GlobeTERM, and getting the best out of both; and
• using regression equations and neural networks to create systems that mimic CGE. These systems are valuable for organizations that: need CGE answers, lack in-house CGE expertise and are precluded by security considerations from sharing the specific nature of their interests with external consultants.