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Objective
Trade policy is increasingly used as a strategic instrument to advance a wide range of national objectives, not only market access and competitiveness, but also supply security, resilience, strategic industries, and broader national interest goals. Governments face overlapping priorities such as managing trade imbalances, responding to shocks, and designing targeted tariff and non-tariff measures (NTMs) that align with domestic policy constraints and international commitments.
The GTAP Modeling Trade Policy (MTP) Course is designed to provide professionals and students with hands-on, applied training in the analysis of modern trade policy using the GTAP computable general equilibrium model (version 7). The course provides participants with an opportunity to develop practical skills in the design of policy experiments, the implementation of changes in tariff and non-tariff barriers, and the interpretation of model results for policy-relevant insights. The curriculum emphasizes an intuitive treatment of core economic theory, and provides structured, guided experience in running the standard GTAP Model within the RunGTAP software environment. Learning culminates in team-based research projects in which participants frame a real-world policy question, implement the relevant tariff and NTM scenarios, and communicate results in a way that supports decision-making. By the end of the course, participants will have strengthened their applied capacity to assess the economy-wide and sectoral implications of tariff and non-tariff policy options, including preferential trade agreement-style (PTA) liberalization scenarios or tariff hikes where relevant, within a broader trade policy context.
During the online course, participants will:
- consider the potential impacts of trade policies, including on GDP, trade, factors of production and sectoral production – connecting applied model results to trade theories
- operationalize the modelling of different aspects of trade policies within the GTAP CGE model, including tariff and non-tariff barriers
- learn about different approaches to modelling non-tariff measures and their implications for importing and exporting countries
- learn how to interpret general equilibrium model results, including the impact of alternative closures
Structure
The course is delivered fully online and supported by the textbook, Introduction to Computable General Equilibrium Models, 3e, the eBook version of which, as well as all other necessary course software and materials, will be provided to participants. Since participants will be located all around the world, there are no set meeting times for the course, but instructors may schedule periodic, online check-in sessions as needed. Learning and communication take place through active discussions among the participants and instructors, which are carried out as asynchronous, threaded conversations on the classroom bulletin board, and through virtual team work on collaborative projects and online meetings facilitated by the instructors.
Content Overview
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Week 1 - "Getting Started"
- Download and familiarize with the course website, material, and software
- Review key tasks in RunGTAP including uploading a version, viewing the database, and constructing a numeraire experiment
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Week 2 - "Analysis of trade policies and Tariffs"
- Understand the welfare effects of trade taxes
- Construct and run a simple tariff policy experiment
- Examine the effects of bilateral tariff reductions
- Identify trade creation and trade diversion effects
- Analyze key macroeconomic and sectoral results using AnalyseGE
- Trace model results back through the relevant equations and shocks
- Implement and interpret a closure swap
- Use welfare decomposition and AnalyseGE to explain and report model results
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Week 3 - "Non-Tariff Measures in GTAP"
- Learn about econometric approaches to estimating the AVEs of NTMs
- Incorporate the AVE of an NTM into the GTAP Data Base using Altertax
- Use subtotals to decompose and compare results
- Construct an experiment in RunGTAP in which NTMs are reduced
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Weeks 4 - "New Approaches"
- Learn about the alternative mechanisms used for depicting NTMs in the standard GTAP Model
- Compare alternative modelling mechanisms and their implications for assessing the effects of reductions in NTMs
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Weeks 5 - "Group Research Project"
- Work with the assigned GTAP Data Base aggregation
- Define a focused research or policy question
- Develop the modeling approach, including shocks, closure assumptions, sectors, and regions
- Set up and test the experiment in RunGTAP
- Use relevant CGE studies and course materials to guide the analysis
- Explore alternative modeling choices and critically assess scenario assumptions
- Complete a numeraire experiment to confirm that the project aggregation is set up and running correctly
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Weeks 6 - "Group Research Project"
- Analyze experiment results
- Interpret findings using economic intuition, model structure, shocks, and closure assumptions
- Compare and evaluate the most important results
- Prepare and submit the final group presentation, including the research question, model experiment, key results, and policy implications
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Week 7 - "Wrap-Up and Evaluation"
Time Commitment
Participants should expect to spend approximately 10-12 hours/week on this course.
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