Introduction to General Equilibrium Modeling Using GAMS
Course objective:
The course will introduce all the basic tools for constructing and implementing large-scale applied general equilibrium models for policy analysis. By the end of the course the participants will have acquired detailed knowledge of and extensive hands-on experience in:
- the structure of open economy general equilibrium models,
- building the database for such models,
- building social accounting matrices,
- calibrating a CGE model,
- formulating a CGE model as a non linear programming problem,
- formulating a CGE model as a mixed complementarity problem,
- implementing the model on the computer using the GAMS software,
- using the solvers CONOPT, MINOS, PATH, and PATHNLP,
- modeling the labor market,
- formulating scenarios and running policy simulations,
- reporting and interpreting the results,
- linking GAMS and Excel for reading and reporting data
Methodology:
The course uses a practical and very intensive approach to model building. The participants will actually build the model EcoMod step-by-step with guidance from the instructors: from small to large scale and from simple to complex structure. The participants will acquire extensive practical hands-on experience in building a complex, large-scale model. This will allow them to easily implement the first version of their own model using the GAMS codes of EcoMod.