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Course Catalog

GTAP Events: 2003 Advisory Board Meeting

General Information
Date: June 10-11, 2003
Location: Scheveningen, The Hague, The Netherlands
Attachments: PDF File Background Document
- Objectives, goals, and accomplishments
- Data Base developments
- Model developments
- Courses, conference, and website
PDF File 2003 Summary
- Accomplishments
- Significant points
- Schedule for Version 6
- Goals for the coming year


Agency Reports and Representatives


Major Points of Discussion
  • Strategic planning
    The Center plans to undertake a strategic planning exercise in the coming year and the Board provided some valuable input and ideas about how to proceed with this activity.
  • Market access (Protection) data base
    There was considerable discussion of the protection data base at this year's meeting. It appears that we are on the verge of making a major step forward in this area.
  • Data base quality assurance
    The board was pleased with progress in this area. The Center will continue to make these high priorities in the coming year. It was also suggested that we should try to get more country notes from the contributors and develop more specific guidelines for the disaggregation of value-added.
  • Parameter estimation and model validation
    The board was pleased with progress made in this area (trade elasticities and consumer demand) and would like to see this research continued. Development of a time series CGE data base at the US-ITC should help to fuel future work on model validation. There was also a sense that the Center should continue to build links with researchers conducting econometric research on international trade issues.


Goals for the Coming Year
  1. Release the version 6 GTAP Data Base.
  2. Compare protection data bases from different sources (WITS/TRAINS, CEPII, AMAD), seek to understand their differences, and determine the best approach to characterizing protection in the version 6 data base.
  3. Introduce bilateral information on direct trade in services
  4. Improve the government accounts in GTAP to permit a more accurate treatment of public finance issues.
  5. Produce a prototype version of GTAP with explicit treatment of domestic wholesale/retail/transport margins.
  6. Refine and document the dynamic GTAP Model in anticipation of a dynamic modeling short course.
  7. Continue work on parameter estimation for GTAP and encourage research aimed at model validation.
  8. Work on improving the quality of primary factor splits. Of particular concern is the treatment of self-employed labor as well as land across sub-sectors within agriculture.
  9. Improve the coverage of domestic support data to separately include the commodities that are currently lumped under miscellaneous commodities in the OECD PSE tables.
  10. Continue to improve communication with national IO data base contributors.
  11. Conduct a feasibility study on the cost of bringing the IFPRI/UNDP Social Accounting Matrices for Latin America into the GTAP Data Base. Then attempt to find funding to bring these into version 6.
  12. Continue work on a GTAP baseline. This time special interest was expressed in the policy aspect of this baseline, e.g., China's accession to the WTO, various FTAs, etc.
  13. Encourage submission of a GTAP technical paper on the topic of adjustment costs. The idea would be to make some add-on code readily available to users with an interest in this topic.
  14. Go through a strategic planning process at the Center.
  15. Organize the 7th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis to be held in Washington, D.C., in June of 2004.
  16. Hold the annual GTAP Short Course at Purdue University in August 2003.


Alan A. Powell Award
Each year we acknowledge the contributions of one of the GTAP Current Advisory Board Representatives with the Alan A. Powell award. Alan Powell was the inspiration behind this project. He founded the IMPACT Project in Australia-and directed it for more than two decades. The GTAP effort drew heavily on the IMPACT philosophy.

We are pleased to announce that the 2003 Award Recipient is Robert Koopman.

Bob has served on the advisory board since 1998 when he brought the USITC into the Consortium. Since then he has had a significant impact on GTAP. With a strong background in Russia and Eastern Europe, he was in a perfect position to help to extend GTAP in that direction by means of personal presentations to government officials, stimulating small projects by other agencies, and putting up his own staff time and resources. As a consequence, we now have a first-class Russian data base.

Bob has also been a tireless advocate of training for his people. He has sent a remarkably wide range of individuals to the GTAP Short Courses, and as a result, the ITC is getting a great deal out of GTAP as well.

Finally, he has been a regular participant at the GTAP board meetings. His advocacy for work on parameter estimation and model validation makes him an especially deserving recipient of the Alan A. Powell Award.

Congratulations, Bob!


Research Fellows
Each year, Members of the GTAP Consortium nominate new GTAP Research Fellows. This year's recipients are:

Mary Burfisher
For her role in advancing economy-wide analysis of agricultural trade policies.

Shih Hsun Hsu
For his role in advancing economy-wide analysis of public policies in Taiwan.

Allan Rae
For his role in advancing economy-wide analysis of agricultural and trade policies

David Tarr
For his role in advancing economy-wide analysis of trade policies in developing countries

Dominique van der Mensbrugghe
For his role in advancing economy-wide analysis of developing country policies


Research Fellows are nominated for 3 years. This year, the Board re-nominated:

Glenn Harrison
In recognition of outstanding economic research using the GTAP Data Base as well as contributions to broadening of the network of GTAP users.


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