Suchergebnisse

In the summer of 2014 Russia imposed a ban on most agri-food products from countries enforcing Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia. We use a specific factors computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate the short-run impact of this retaliatory policy. The baseline is carefully designed to isolate the impacts of the ban on the European Union (EU), Russia itself and a selection of key trade partners. The modelling of the ban follows a novel approach, where it is treated as a loss of established trade preferences via reductions in consumer utility in the Armington import function. Not surprisingly, the results indicate that Russia bears the highest income loss (about €3.4 billion) while the EU recovers part of its lost trade through expansion of exports to other markets. An ex-post comparison between simulation results and observed trade data reveals the model predictions to be broadly accurate, thereby validating the robustness of the modelling approach. ; Published

In August 2014, Russia imposed a one year import ban on most agri-food products from countries enforcing Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia. A computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is used to simulate effects of this retaliatory policy shift across the European Union (EU), Russia and a selection of key trade partners. Sensitivity analysis of factor mobility is performed to better capture short term and long term implications of this import prohibition, while latest trade data are carefully prepared and exploited. In the short term, due to high factor immobility, production has very little leeway to adjust, provoking notable variations in prices which absorb most of the import ban shock. At EU level, price and production decrease by about 1.9% and 0.3% respectively, while in the longer term (if the ban is maintained beyond one year) these figures amount 1.4% and 1.2% respectively. Interestingly, results indicate that Russia is the region with the highest welfare loss (about 3.4 billion euros) while the EU can recover around 25% of the lost trade volume with Russia through expansion of exports to other markets.

Armenia has made significant progress in improving population health outcomes over the past two decades. However, essential health care for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is underutilized in part due to the cost of access. Armenia has also committed as a signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals, to making progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC). This commitment involves guaranteeing access to essential health care for all its citizens. The Ministry of Health (MoH) has developed a concept note for the introduction for Universal Health Insurance that proposes to mobilize additional revenue through payroll taxes or higher budgetary allocations to the sector. However, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) has noted that revenue mobilization options should ideally demonstrate positive returns in terms of economic growth and employment. Therefore, at the request of the MoH, the World Bank has modeled the macroeconomic impacts of options to increase domestic resource mobilization to finance universal access to essential health services in the basic benefits package. The analysis assumes that through UHC reforms that mobilize additional public spending, the government would cover the cost of ninety-five percent of household needs for health care from 2021 to 2050, and that the increase in the demand for care will be supported by improvements in supply-side efficiency. The results suggest that increasing direct taxes is better than increasing indirect taxes as the former are less distortionary and cause smaller allocative inefficiencies.

In recent years, reducing food waste and loss has become a policy priority in the European Union, but little is known about impacts of related measures in the EU and beyond. This study informs the debate on food waste reduction through a quantitative analysis. It considers adjustment costs for reducing food waste in food processing industries and impacts on food availability, pressure on land and water and other environmental consequences. The results suggest that the leakage effects of global trade may offset almost all benefits of food waste reduction in the EU. We thus conclude that costly efforts to reduce food waste in the EU cannot be motivated by larger contributions to global food availability and environmental benefits. This highlights the need for global coordination of such policies and/or more targeted actions in the EU which focus on specific production chains, where losses can be reduced and environmental gains obtained at a relatively low cost.

This paper provides a model-based impact analysis of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on the four main regional blocks in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It uses the Modular Agricultural GeNeral Equilibrium Tool (MAGNET), a multi-region computable general equilibrium model. To provide a comprehensive analysis, other key EU policies, such as trade or GHG policies, are modelled as well. A thoroughly prepared reference scenario is contrasted with a counterfactual scenario, where the CAP is removed and ambitious trade agreements with non-African EU trade partners are implemented. Results provide interesting insights into the identification and quantification of - mainly indirect - effects of the CAP in SSA