MPIA-10001 Computable General Equilibrium Micro-Simulation Analysis of the Impact of Trade Policies on Poverty in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This project aims to evaluate the impact of trade policy shocks on the incidence of poverty and on the distribution of income. Isolating the impact of policy effects has the advantage of enabling researchers and policy makers to know how serious an impact a policy has on income distribution and poverty and thus, will facilitate informed policy making. Because of the current growing concern about unequal income distribution and poverty in Zimbabwe, and because of the central role being played by trade and external policies in the liberalization process, it is important to establish the direct links among these issues. Trade policies have made up a large part of policy in the nineties and have contributed significantly to changes in growth, employment and ownership of resources. These policies affect terms of trade between agriculture and industry, wages, resource ownership, economic performance and employment within the economy. The main trade policies to be tackled in this paper are terms of trade changes and tariff reforms. The approach used to handle these issues is to include individual data from a national survey directly in a computable general equilibrium model (CGE) according to the principles of micro simulation. The advantage of this approach is that it allows us to break down the contribution of income variations, the poverty line and income distribution in the evolution of the main poverty indicators emanating from trade policy.

Members

Project leader: Margaret Chitiga

Project researchers: Tonia Kandiero

Journal publication

Authors	Co-Authors	Title of paper	Title of Economic Review	Bibliographic references
Margaret Chitiga	Tonia Kandiero,Ramos Mabugu	The Impact of Tariff Removal on Poverty in Zimbabwe: A Computable General Equilibrium Microsimulation	Journal of Development Studies	(2008) 43:6, 1105-1125.
Margaret Chitiga	Charles Nhemachena,Wellington Jogo	Short-run Effects of Tariff Reform in Zimbabwe: Applied General Equilibrium Analysis	Journal of African Economies	Volume 10, August 2001, pages 174-190

Working Papers

	Title	Modified	Size	Comments	Recommendations
	A Computable General Equilibrium Micro-Simulation Analysis of the Impact of Trade Policies on Poverty in Zimbabwe - published June 2nd	2005-06-02	523 KB	0	0

Policy Briefs

	Title	Modified	Size	Comments	Recommendations
	Trade Policies and Poverty in Zimbabwe: A Computable General Equilibrium Micro-Simulation Analysis	2007-09-15	29.9KB	0	0

Final report

	Title	Modified	Size	Comments	Recommendations
		2005-05-22	295 KB	0	1

Proposal

	Title	Modified	Size	Comments	Recommendations
	Trade Policies and Poverty in Zimbabwe: A CGE Micro Simulation Analysis	2023-03-21	234.52KB	0	0