Two decades of CGE modelling lessons from models for Egypt

Egypt's exceptional experience of two decades of CGE modelling is used to derive lessons for comparable analysis for other countries, give important issues for CGE modelling in general and give future modellers a guide to build on the older modelling experience. It can be derived from the CGE studies of the Egyptian economy that the model closure and the parameters to a large extent determine the results. However, there is no agreement on the closure rule one should use to describe the Egyptian economy while the parameters are generally not very reliable if compared to parameters used in econometric models. the small contribution of these models to actual policy making in Egypt may be explained by the unreliability of the parameters, the absence of financial markets and the short-term focus of most models. It is therefore concluded that improvement of the reliability of the parameters, the adaptation of the model to changes in the economic structure and the introduction of financial markets are important issues for future research.