This paper provides complete documentation for version 7 of the 'standard' Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model. This is the first comprehensive documentation of the model since the 1997 'GTAP book' and this updated version includes some important new features. On a substantive level, commodities and activities are separated, allowing for multi-product sectors, as well as multiple sectors producing the same commodity. Additional flexibility is provided for modeling of production and consumption behavior, and the valuation and naming conventions have been modified. In addition, this paper folds in important advances since the 1997 publication, including the revised treatment of non-homotheticity in final demand, the welfare decomposition and multi-modal international transportation. The paper opens with an overview which puts this widely used model in broader context. The model exposition is comprehensive and includes a bridging table linking the original, 'classic' model with the current version. This is followed by a section discussing the major extensions of the standard model and how they are being used. The paper closes with an overall assessment and a discussion of future research directions.JEL codes: C68, D58, D60, F1
are evaluated at market prices and face no further (border) taxes. Similarly, since domestic sales do not cross a border, they do not face such taxes either. In order to convert exports to fob values, it is necessary to add the export tax, denoted XTAX(i,r,s). Note that these taxes are written in a form that is destination destination/source-specific trade policy measures at the level of disaggregated regions and commodities (this varies by type of policy intervention), once the data base has been aggregated over either commodities or regions, bilateral rates of taxation will vary due to compositional differences. Therefore, it is important to maintain this bilateral detail in the modeling framework.
The global economic effects of eliminating certain significant categories of nontariff measures (NTMs) are estimated in a CGE context. As a first step, a database of institutional information identifying alleged instances of NTMs for particular products and countries is constructed based on WTO, U.S. Government, and EU sources, and compared with the UNCTAD policy inventory. This database is then concorded to a GTAP-feasible multiregion, multisector aggregation. Retail price data from the EIU CityData database, similarly concorded, are analyzed econometrically, taking into account systematic deviations from purchasing-power parity, to determine whether and to what extent the presence of alleged NTMs is associated with significantly higher prices. The estimated price effects are then used to calibrate a CGE simulation in order to obtain simulation estimates of trade and welfare effects of their removal, which can be disaggregated. Removal of the categories of NTMs under consideration yields global gains on the order of $90 billion. These gains arise notably from liberalization by Japan and the European Union by region, and from liberalization of apparel and machinery/equipment by sector.
Thompson provided helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Peter Barry and two anonymous reviewers helped to considerably sharpen the exposition.
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