IFPRI Egypt conducted CGE modeling workshops in 2019 and 2020. The details are discussed below:
1. Building on the continuous collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR) in Egypt, IFPRI has been working with a group of researchers, from Cairo University, to provide 10 weekly online training sessions on Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modeling during the period from December 5th, 2019 to January 23rd, 2020. This course covered the main economic theories that underlie CGE models, as well as running many relevant policy simulations on issues such as: foreign capital inflows, changes in terms of trade, increases in the efficiency of the economic activities, introducing new taxes, changes in the transaction costs. Participants also learned how to interpret the results of simulations, as they discussed interactively the likely impacts of these policy changes on the macro and sectoral levels as well as on the welfare of the different household groups. These online sessions were taught by Dr. Manfred Wiebelt, Senior Research Fellow at The Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany. For more information, click here.
2. Building on the cooperation between IFPRI and the Government of Yemen, IFPRI has worked together with the World Bank Country office for Yemen to construct a disaggregated regional Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Yemen, and to use this SAM to build a Dynamic Computable General Equilibrium model (DCGE) model. The DCGE has been used to quantify the damage costs of conflict as well as implement the possible scenarios for the reconstruction of Yemen economy. In this regard, IFPRI Egypt Country office, based in Cairo, held a two-day training workshop, during 24th-25th April 2019, to highlight the main features of the DCGE model as well as discuss the model’s assumptions and limitations. A group of five statistical experts from the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) attended this workshop. For more information, click here.