© Scott McDonald
Estimating a Social Accounting Matrix
Target Audiences
The target audiences for this course are
- CGE model developers, e.g., graduate students, researchers, academics, etc.,
- CGE Model users, e.g., policy analysts, researchers, consultants, etc.,
Course Aims
To develop the SAM estimation skills of participants (using GAMS) so they
- understand the structure and content of complete and consistent SAMs;
- understand the price system in a SAM;
- can organise the data required for prior SAMs and satellite accounts;
- understand the strengths and weaknesses of SAM estimation techniques; and
- can critically evaluate the information content of a SAM.
Course Objectives
On completion of the course the participants will be able to:
- evaluate critically the information content of a SAM;
- identify and understand the data requirements to create a prior SAM;
- use SAMEST, & RAS, programmes to estimate complete & consistent SAMs;
- interpret the results from the SAMEST programme to identify those cells of a prior SAM that would benefit from improved prior estimates; and
- identify appropriate satellite accounts consistent with the estimated SAM.
Approach
In this course the participants use data presented in various formats to derive prior estimates of SAMs that are then used to generate complete and consistent SAMs. The course uses mathematical estimation methods (RAS, Modified RAS and Maximum Entropy) to derive the complete and consistent SAMs. The data used to estimate the prior SAMs are derived from pre existing SAMs that have been perturbed; this allows comparisons between the estimated and actual SAMs to evaluate the performance of the mathematical estimation methods.
This course does NOT use a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to access GAMS.