In a meta-analysis of trade policy models, Hess and von Cramon-Taubadel (2008) use over 5800 simulated welfare effects from 110 studies of potential Doha Development Agenda outcomes to identify characteristics of models, data and policy experiments that influence simulation results. This meta-analysis, which is recapitulated here, produces plausible results and explains a significant proportion of the variation in simulated welfare effects. However, due to insufficient documentation and the complexity of the general and partial equilibrium models in the literature sample, many explanatory variables employed in this analysis are binary. This precludes more detailed analysis of their impacts across models. Therefore, a partial equilibrium model and a single country CGE for Canada are employed to generate synthetic meta-data. Simulation scenarios are based on random combinations of base data, elasticities and tariff changes selected from plausible ranges obtained from the literature sample. The synthetic meta-data has the advantage that the values of explanatory variables are measured exactly. This makes it possible to explore more complex issues of functional form and interaction between variables in the meta-analysis. The results indicate for both models that first- and second-order polynomials provide sufficient approximations of the model response. Especially in the CGE model, interaction terms between elasticities and policy variables are important. We conclude that meta-analysis can provide insights into the behaviour of trade policy models beyond what is possible with conventional sensitivity analysis and qualitative reviews.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Canadian Agricultural Trade Policy Research Network in its series Commissioned Papers with number
43466.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: