GTAP Resources: Resource Display

GTAP Resource #7913

"Beyond GDP for CGE Policy Analysis: A Well-being and Footprint Benchmark for GTAP-RD and EPPA"
Authors: Berthet, Etienne, Ilaria Fusacchia and Jennifer Morris


Abstract
GDP remains the dominant progress metric, yet it sidesteps the non-market foundations of prosperity and the resource pressures that economic activity generates. Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models inherit this gap: their baselines are rarely tested against multidimensional well-being outcomes or consumption-based environmental footprints. We build a pathway-based empirical benchmark and connect it to GTAP-RD and MIT EPPA. Using a 173-country annual panel for 2000–2020 (~98% of world population), we combine Social Progress Index outcomes with Decent Living Standards (DLS) provisioning indicators and match each country to consumption-based footprints for greenhouse gases, biodiversity pressure, and scarce water drawn from a global multi-regional input–output accounting. Hierarchical time-series clustering on these joint trajectories yields eleven HDI-graded development pathways. Within each pathway we test panel cointegration between footprint and GDP (and, where data permit, TFP), estimating long-run elasticities by Fully Modified OLS and short-run dynamics via a panel error-correction model. Three questions organise the analysis. RQ1: how do footprints track GDP in the short and long run along each pathway, and which show relative or absolute decoupling? Every retained pathway displays relative decoupling (0 < ß1 < 1); none reaches absolute decoupling, and countries at identical HDI diverge sharply on productivity channels and adjustment speeds. RQ2: do GTAP-RD and EPPA baselines replicate these pathway-specific footprint–GDP responses? RQ3: does restructuring final demand toward DLS bundles, via calibrated preference shifters under an add-up constraint, change the scale and composition of simulated footprints? Together, the benchmark supplies pathway elasticities for model validation and DLS target vectors for basic-needs provisioning inside the CGE policy toolchain.


Resource Details () GTAP Keywords
Category: 2026 Conference Paper
Status: Published
By/In: Presented during the 29th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis (Kyoto, Japan)
Date: 2026
Version:
Created: Berthet, E. (4/30/2026)
Updated: Berthet, E. (4/30/2026)
Visits: 140
- Sustainable development
- GTAP Data Base and extensions
- Economic development
- Economic growth
- Calibration and parameter estimation
- Econometric methods
- Global


Attachments
If you have trouble accessing any of the attachments below due to disability, please contact the authors listed above.


Public Access
  docx File format GTAP Resource 7905  (53.3 KB)   Replicated: 0 time(s)


Restricted Access
No documents have been attached.


Special Instructions
No instructions have been specified.


Comments (0 posted)
You must log in before entering comments.

No comments have been posted.