Estimation of substitution elasticities for CGE models

Azusa Okagawa () and Kanemi Ban ()
Additional contact information
Azusa Okagawa: Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University
Kanemi Ban: Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University

No 08-16, Discussion Papers in Economics and Business from Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics

Abstract: Many studies of climate policy are based on computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling. The simulation results and conclusions reached by these models depend on the size of the parameters specified. In particular, the substitution elasticities between production factors have a major influence. Therefore, in order to obtain reliable simulation results we should employ empirical evidence gathered on the substitution elasticities. Unfortunately, in many instances, the lack of econometric analysis means we must specify these key parameters based on existing work or borrow them from prominent modeling exercises. In this study, we estimate nested constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production functions using panel data for OECD countries to help improve the reliability of CGE models for climate policy. Our results show higher values for substitution elasticities closely related to energy inputs for energy-intensive industries and lower values for other industries compared to the conventional values often used in existing models. With the new parameters estimated, we find that conventional parameters could overestimate the necessary carbon price by 44%, and obtain evidence of different distributions of CO2 emission reduction costs across industries.

Keywords: Substitution elasticities; CGE modeling; Climate policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D58 Q43 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2008-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp, nep-ene and nep-env
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (165)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.econ.osaka-u.ac.jp/library/global/dp/0816.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osk:wpaper:0816

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers in Economics and Business from Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The Economic Society of Osaka University ().