Oléagineux, Corps Gras, Lipides. Volume 13, Number 4, 239-46, Juillet-Août 2006, les modèles économétriques utilisés par la banque mondiale

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Author(s) : Jean-Marc Boussard

Summary : Many econometric models are providing a scientific guarantee in support of full trade liberalisation. This is an old tradition, as old as the 18 th century “physiocrates” (those who wanted a “natural law” governing economy. Most of these models, however, are not younger than Leon Walras’s. The latter is a famous economist of the 19 th century, one of the first having introduced the idea of a general equilibrium model. After more than one century, and many experiences, the question arises of the validity of Leon Walras’s intuition, so genial they may have been at the time. A modern analysis of the liberalisation benefits should now rely on dynamic models, in which uncertainty regarding futures prices is explicitly taken in account. With such models, it would be possible to evaluate both the benefits arising from a better world resources allocation and the cost associated with the removal of many regulation policies which, historically, had been created under the pressure of market failures, and which a total liberalisation would make impossible to continue.

Keywords : CGE, Walras, liberalisation, risk, econometric models