The next European Calculator expert consultation workshop will take place on Thursday, November 22, 2018 in Brussels.
As one of the ten co-design workshops of the project, this workshop is devoted to the Transboundary Effect module of EUCalc, which quantifies the effects on intra- and extra-EU trade flows of alternative EUCalc pathways by using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling framework. The simulated transboundary effects will inform EUCalc users of likely future economic dependencies between the EU and the rest of the world due to the EU’s decarbonization efforts.
During the workshop expert opinions will be gathered on three sets of key questions :
- What are the most important, relevant and representative user-defined EUCalc pathways to be simulated for generating the transboundary effects, particularly concerning the commonalities and deviations of decarbonization ambition levels across member states and sectors? Once selected, these representative scenarios will be used to form an “envelope” to approximate the full range of the virtually unlimited user-defined decarbonization pathways.
- Is there a long-run relationship between GDP growth and trade expansion and if so, how can such relationship be enforced in the CGE model? What is the “correct” range of key parameters such as trade elasticities (e.g. Armington elasticities)? In simulating scenarios of large structure changes, what are the reasonable assumptions regarding differential sectoral productivity growth patterns? In a trade-focused CGE model, how should long-run land and other natural resource supply be specified? And how can changing energy technologies be parsimoniously represented?
- What key transboundary effects (e.g. intra and extra-EU trade flows) should the model exercises focus on? At what sectoral aggregation level and for which key sectors should such results be computed? How should the simulated transboundary effects be presented in EUCalc (e.g. as the trade matrix itself or in terms of key indicators such as self-sufficiency ratio, trade dependency/exposure index, or other indicators)?
The project is able to support limited number of participants, and the workshop registration is currently by invitation only, but please do watch this space for updates.