Two decades of CGE modelling lessons from models for Egypt

Egypt's exceptional experience of two decades of CGE modelling is used to derive lessons for comparable analysis for other countries, give important issues for CGE modelling in general and give future modellers a guide to build on the older modelling experience. It can be derived from the CGE studies of the Egyptian economy that the model closure and the parameters to a large extent determine the results. However, there is no agreement on the closure rule one should use to describe the Egyptian economy while the parameters are generally not very reliable if compared to parameters used in econometric models. the small contribution of these models to actual policy making in Egypt may be explained by the unreliability of the parameters, the absence of financial markets and the short-term focus of most models. It is therefore concluded that improvement of the reliability of the parameters, the adaptation of the model to changes in the economic structure and the introduction of financial markets are important issues for future research.

Labour migration in Europe and the New Economic Geography

This paper addresses consequences of increased labour migration in Europe due to productivity effects in a core-periphery model. Traditional trade and growth models predict an overall beneficial impact of the accession of the current candidate states to the European Union. However, models incorporating imperfect competition warn that peripheral countries may realise only a small portion of this beneficial impact of the accession. In this chapter we go a step further: On the domestic level the countries accession may have negative effects while on the nationals level the effect will be positive. An empirical indication that benefits of accession may be low is the marginal benefits during the early phases of EU membership for Greece and Ireland and the Neue Länder of Germany. The following main questions are addressed in this chapter. What is the consequence of increased migration within the European Union due to deregulation in the context of the creation of a common market, and what will be the consequence of the extension of the European union with central and eastern European countries?

A new approach to updating SAMs

The paper considers a (static) portfolio system that satisfies adding-up contraints and the gross substitution theorem. The paper shows the relationship of the two conditions to the weak dominant diagonal property of the matrix of interest rate elasticities. This enables to investigate the impact of simultaneous changes in interest rates on the asset demands.

Regionális fejlesztéspolitikai hatáselemzés térbeli számítható általános egyensúlyi modellel: a Gmr-Magyarország SCGE modellje

A térbeli számítható általános egyensúlyi (SCGE) modellek az új gazdaságföldrajz (ÚGF) „empirikus megfelelõi”. Szemléleti-módszertani gyökereiket tehát az új gazdaságföldrajzi és a számítható általános egyensúlyi (CGE) modellekben találjuk meg. Tanulmányunkban a Nemzeti Fejlesztési Ügynökség részére az Új Magyarország Fejlesztési Terv hatáselemzésére kidolgozott GMR-Magyarország modell-rendszerbe épített SCGE modellt ismertetjük, valamint egy szimulációval illusztráljuk a modell használatát.SCGE modelling, computable general equilibrium models, new economic geography, GMR-Hungary

House Prices, Bubbles and City Size

We build a theoretical model that relates house price, city size and the expected future growth of demand for housing. Our model combines the Alonso-Mills model on urban economics with insights from financial economics on house prices. Estimating the model for cities in the US, we empirically validate the positive effect of city size on urban house prices. Moreover, our estimations confirm that an (unrealistic) increase in the expected growth of demand fuelled by the widespread availability of credit provides a better explanation for the recent bubble than inelastic housing supply that explained earlier bubbles

Correctie voor wederuitvoer verkleint belang van Nederland als handelspartner

Wederuitvoer wordt niet altijd (ten volle) toegeschreven aan de juiste herkomst of eindbestemming. Omdat de wederuitvoer toeneemt, geven handelsstatistieken steeds minder goed de feitelijke handelsstromen weer tussen landen. Hoe vertekend zijn de Nederlandse cijfers door wederuitvoer

The Magnitude and Distance Decay of Trade in Goods and Services

__Abstract__ Using a newly assembled, consistent and disaggregated dataset (12 goods and 7 services) on internal and bilateral trade for 25 European countries, we analyse the difference between trade in goods and services. The measurement of both trade in goods and trade in services is improved over earlier research, allowing us to compare trade in goods and services in a coherent and systematic way. First, our dataset is made consistent with the domestic demand and production and the total exports and imports at the sector and product level. Second, we explicitly control for re-exports. We find that, although goods are more often bilaterally traded than services, the volume of bilateral trade in services does not attenuate less with distance than the volume of bilateral trade in good