Warwick J. McKibbin

The Theoretical and Empirical Structure of the G-Cubed Model

Abstract This paper describes the theoretical and empirical features of G-Cubed, a multi-country, multi-sector intertemporal general equilibrium model. G-Cubed combines the attractive features of macroeconometric models and computable general equilibrium models into a unified framework. It has been used to study a variety of topics including: greenhouse gas policy, trade liberalization, tax policy and macroeconomic policy. This paper is a technical description of the models design.

The Role of Economics in Climate Change Policy

The most important characteristic of climate change as a policy problem is uncertainty. From climatology to economics, uncertainties are pervasive, large and difficult to resolve. However, the economic theory of environmental policy under uncertainty provides a clear guide to the design of an appropriate policy. An efficient and practical approach would be a hybrid that incorporates the best features of tradable permits and emissions taxes. Unfortunately, international negotiations have taken a different approach, focusing on rigid targets and timetables for emissions reductions. The result has been the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement with no real chance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Consequences of China's WTO Accession for Its Neighbors

Our simulations of a global macroeconomic model suggest that Chinas WTO accession could create significant welfare losses in the ASEAN-4 if foreign direct investment (FDI) is significantly redirected away from these countries toward China, and if the ASEAN-4 countries are unable to implement policies to make up for the slower rate of technological diffusion from the reduced FDI inflow. If the ASEAN-4 do not fall behind technologically, then they will be able to find lucrative niches within the lengthened international manufacturing production chains. The ASEAN-4 must therefore strengthen their abilities to absorb new foreign technologies quickly and to engage in indigenous technical innovations.

Reducing Coal Subsidies and Trade Barriers: Their Contribution to Greenhouse Gas Abatement

International negotiations for an agreement to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases are unlikely to produce concrete and comprehensive policies for effective emission reductions in the near term, not least because the policy measures being considered are economically very costly to major industries in rich countries and are unlikely to prevent ‘leakage’ through a re-location of carbon-intensive activities to poorer countries. An alternative or supplementary approach that is more likely to achieve carbon and methane emission reductions, and at the same time generate national and global economic benefits rather than costs, involves lowering coal subsidies and trade barriers. Past coal policies which encouraged excessive production of coal in a number of industrial countries and excessive coal consumption in numerous developing and transition economies are currently under review and in some cases are being reformed. This paper documents those distortions and outlines the circumstances under which their reform could not only improve the economy but also lower greenhouse gas emissions globally. It also provides modelling results which quantify the orders of magnitudes that could be involved in reducing those distortions. The effects on economic activity as well as global carbon emissions are examined using the G-Cubed multi-country general equilibrium model of the world economy. Both the gains in economic efficiency and the reductions in carbon dioxide emissions that could result from such reforms are found to be substantial – a ‘no regrets’ outcome or win-win Pareto improvement for the economy and the environment that contrasts markedly with many of the costly proposals currently being advocated to reduce greenhouse gases.

What to expect from an international system of tradable permits for carbon emissions

We use an econometrically estimated multi-region, multi-sector general equilibrium model of the world economy to examine the effects of using a system of internationally tradable emission permits to control world carbon dioxide emissions. We focus, in particular, on the effects of the system on flows of trade and international capital. Our results show that international trade and capital flows significantly alter projections of the domestic effects of the emissions mitigation policy, compared with analyses that ignore international capital flows, and that under some systems of international permit trading the United States is likely to become a significant permit seller, the opposite of conventional wisdom.

Globalization and Disease: The Case of SARS

The purpose of this paper is to provide an assessment of the global economic impacts of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) as well as to provide a more comprehensive approach to estimating the global consequences of major disease outbreaks. Our empirical estimates of the economic effects of the SARS epidemic are based on a global model called the G-Cubed (Asia Pacific) model. Most previous studies on the economic effects of epidemics focus on the disease-associated medical costs or forgone incomes resulting from disease-related morbidity and mortality, but the most significant real costs of SARS have been generated by changes in spending behavior by households and firms in affected countries. This study estimates the cost of the SARS outbreak by focusing on the impacts on consumption and investment behavior through changes in the cost and risk of doing business. Through increased economic interdependence, these changes in behavior have wide-ranging general equilibrium consequences for the world economy that can lead to economic losses well in excess of the traditional estimates of the cost of disease.

A CREDIBLE FOUNDATION FOR LONG TERM INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

To succeed in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, a climate policy must establish credible long-term incentives for investments in new energy-sector capital and in research and development. We argue that credibility implies that international agreements should focus on enhancing coordination and collaboration between countries, rather than on coercion. At the national level, credibility requires political and economic incentives that can be provided by long-term tradable emissions permits, but it needs more flexibility than can be provided by a conventional permit system. We argue that the best mechanism for providing credible long-term incentives is a hybrid system of long and short term emissions permits. Key aspects of the system would be coordinated across countries but the permits would be issued and traded solely within national borders.

The Global Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences

This paper models the global financial crisis as a combination of shocks to global housing markets and sharp increases in risk premia of firms, households, and international investors; and finds that the shocks observed in financial markets can generate in the in the G-Cubed model (an intertemporal global model) the severe economic contraction in global trade and production currently being experienced in 2009. Our investigation shows that the distinction between the production and trade of durable and non-durable goods plays a key role in explaining the much larger contraction in trade than GDP experienced by most economies; and that the future of the global economy depends critically on whether the shocks to risk are expected to be permanent or temporary.

Estimates of the costs of Kyoto: Marrakesh versus the McKibbin-Wilcoxen blueprint

In this paper we update our earlier estimates of the cost of the Kyoto Protocol using the G-Cubed model, taking into account the new sink allowances from recent negotiations as well as allowing for multiple gases and new land clearing estimates. Rather than comparing this to the original Kyoto Protocol as other studies have done, we compare the estimates from the current Kyoto Protocol to a realistic alternative to the Kyoto Protocol outlined by McKibbin and Wilcoxen ( 1197a, 1997b, 2002). A key part of the comparison between the two alternatives is not to predict exactly what the outcome for emissions reduction might be at a future date under each approach. What we want to focus on is the importance of the inherent uncertainty about the future that should be at the heart of the design of a suatainable climate policy. To show how important uncertainty is to the design of the climate policies, we take two alternative plausible assumptions about a single aspect of the future predictions and compare the two regimes under these alternative assumptions. Since climate change is all about policy making under uncertainty it is important in comparing regimes to explore how the regimes handle aspects of uncertainty as well as the average performance of the regimes. This comparison illustrates a fundamental difference between the Kyoto Protocol and the Blueprint.

The East Asian Crisis: Investigating Causes and Policy Responses

The authors identify as the primary cause of the East Asian crisis a fundamental reassessment of the profitability of investments in the region. They identify a number of secondary shocks as well, including interest risk premia, monetary expansion, and declines in output brought about by failures of the financial market. Unlike the Latin American crisis of the 1980s, the East Asian crisis did not reflect commodity price shocks, large changes in world interest rates, fiscal imbalances, or inflationary shocks. It involved large-scale borrowing abroad, but by the private sector rather than the government - and for the normally well-regarded purpose of funding capital investment. It seems unlikely that terms of trade shocks or changes in exchange rates due to pegging to the dollar could, alone, have caused an adjustment crisis of this magnitude - although they could have helped trigger the crisis. More important, expectations of future growth in returns to the corporate sector began to fall. Declines in asset valuations caused major shifts in investment portfolios, and the consequences of asset market shocks were compounded by secondary shocks associated with the abrupt shift to floating rates, concerns about the credibility of government policies, weaknesses in financial sectors, and inadequacies in the mechanisms for corporate restructuring and liquidation. The authors use of forward-looking modeling framework to capture some of the major interactions between asset markets, output, and trade in the countries worst hit by the crisis. They find that the model is able to capture the main features of the crisis.