Policy evaluation lab
(objectives)
The course aims at providing students with first exposure to some of the most relevant quantitative methods for economic policy analysis. The objective is to engage students in an active, team-based process of learning about computable general equilibrium (CGE) models and their use in applied economic policy analysis. The course emphasizes an intuitive and graphical treatment of economic theory in the CGE model and provides structured experiences in running the RunGTAP software environment. RunGTAP is an intuitive, menu-driven CGE model interface that minimizes technological hurdles and allows students to quickly begin to focus on their economic thinking and experimentation. At the end of the course, participants will be entry-level modellers and more informed consumers of CGE-based analyses. During the course, students will: • review core economic theories from micro, macro, trade, and public finance and observe how they are operationalized in an applied general equilibrium model • learn to recognize, control, and interpret the theoretically consistent behavior of consumers and producers • observe the aggregated, macroeconomic impacts of microeconomic behavior • define model experiments that represent real-world issues • learn to interpret general equilibrium model results by integrating their knowledge of multiple fields of economic study
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