Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models play an important role in supporting public-policy making on such issues as trade, climate change and taxation. This significantly revised volume, keeping pace with the next-generation standard CGE model, is the only undergraduate-level introduction of its kind. The volume utilizes a graphical approach to explain the economic theory underlying a CGE model, and provides results from simple, small-scale CGE models to illustrate the links between theory and model outcomes. Its eleven hands-on exercises introduce modelling techniques that are applied to real-world economic problems. Students learn how to integrate their separate fields of economic study into a comprehensive, general equilibrium perspective as they develop their skills as producers or consumers of CGE-based analysis.

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models play an important role in supporting public-policy making on such issues as trade, climate change and taxation. This significantly revised volume, keeping pace with the next-generation standard CGE model, is the only undergraduate-level introduction of its kind. The volume utilizes a graphical approach to explain the economic theory underlying a CGE model, and provides results from simple, small-scale CGE models to illustrate the links between theory and model outcomes. Its eleven hands-on exercises introduce modelling techniques that are applied to real-world economic problems. Students learn how to integrate their separate fields of economic study into a comprehensive, general equilibrium perspective as they develop their skills as producers or consumers of CGE-based analysis.

Agricultural trade barriers and producer subsidies inflict real costs, both on the countries that use these policies and on their trade partners. Trade barriers lower demand for trade partners' products, domestic subsidies can induce an oversupply of agricultural products which depresses world prices, and export subsidies create increased competition for producers in other countries. Eliminating global agricultural policy distortions would result in an annual world welfare gain of $56 billion. High protection for agricultural commodities in the form of tariffs continues to be the major factor restricting world trade. In 2000, World Trade Organisation (WTO) members continued global negotiations on agricultural policy reform. To help policymakers and others realise what is at stake in the global agricultural negotiations, this book quantifies the costs of global agricultural distortions and the potential benefits of their full elimination. It also analyses the effects on US and world agriculture if only partial reform is achieved in liberalising tariffs, tariff-rate quotas (limits on imported goods), domestic support, and export subsidies.