SPATIAL PRICE EQUILIBRIUM AND THE TRANSPORT SECTOR: A TRADE‐CONSISTENT SCGE MODEL

In spatial computable general equilibrium models, interregional trade ought to play an important role in determining the spatial price equilibrium. Although the Armington assumption is commonly employed to describe cross‐hauling, many of the existing models do not explicitly consider the behavior of transport firms. This paper presents a framework that is compatible with the Armington assumption and explicitly considers transport activities. In the model, the trade coefficient takes the form of a potential function, and the equilibrium market price becomes similar to the price index in the context of new economic geography. The features of the model are investigated by using the minimal setting, which comprises two nontransport sectors and three regions. Because transport costs are given exogenously, the commodity prices are determined relative to them. The model can be described as a system of homogeneous equations, where an output in one region can arbitrarily be determined similarly as a price in the Walrasian equilibrium.     

ECONOMETRIC ESTIMATION OF ARMINGTON IMPORT ELASTICITIES FOR A REGIONAL CGE MODEL OF THE ILLINOIS ECONOMY

One of the main concerns associated with the development and use of regional CGE models is the determination of key parameter values, particularly substitution and other price elasticities. A common problem is the lack of appropriate regional data for econometric estimation. Consequently, it is important to identify key parameters that are likely to be important in determining quantitative results and then to prioritize these for estimation where appropriate data are available. In this paper, the focus is on the estimation of the regional trade (import) substitution parameters, which tend to be important in analysis for regional economies (given their openness to trade). Here, commodity import elasticities for the Illinois economy are estimated and tested in a single region CGE model of the Illinois economy. In our econometric estimation, we apply a model that takes account of market size and distance in estimating the substitutability between commodities produced in Illinois and other US states.