GTAP6inGAMS: The Dataset and Static Model

The Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) is a research program initiated in 1992 to provide the economic research community with a global economic dataset for use in the quantitative analyses of international economic issues. The project’s objectives include the provision of a documented, publicly available, global, general equilibrium data base, and to conduct seminars on a regular basis to inform the research community about how to use the data in applied economic analysis.1 GTAP has lead to the establishment of a global network of researchers who share a common interest of multi-region trade analysis and related issues. The research program is coordinated by Thomas Hertel, Director of the Center for Global Trade Analysis at Purdue University. As Deputy Director of this Center, Robert McDougall oversees the data base work. Software development within the GTAP project has been assisted greatly by the efforts of Ken Pearson, Mark Horridge and other Australian researchers from Centre of Policy Studies, Monash University. (See Hertel, ed [1997] and McDougall [2005]). A list of applications based on the GTAP framework can be found at the GTAP home page, (http://www.gtap.org). The principal programming language for GTAP data and modeling work is GEMPACK [Harrison and Pearson 1996]. In the GEMPACK framework the model is solved as a system of nonlinear equations. The present paper describes a third version of the GTAP model