A Meta-Analysis of General and Partial Equilibrium Simulations of Trade Liberalisation under the Doha Development Agenda

Model-based simulation of welfare effects is commonly used to make a case for trade liberalisation and to inform participants and stakeholders in trade negotiations. However, the simulated welfare effects of trade liberalisation vary greatly, even across studies that model similar liberalisation scenarios. This undermines confidence in the reliability of model-based simulations. A meta-analysis of over 100 studies that model WTO Doha Development Agenda trade negotiation outcomes is employed to identify characteristics of models, databases and liberalisation experiments that influence simulated welfare effects. Meta-regressions produce plausible results and explain a significant proportion of the variation in simulated welfare effects in a representative sample of Doha Development Agenda trade liberalisation studies. Results also reveal that many quantitative trade policy simulation studies fail to adequately document the assumptions and data on which they are based. Copyright 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.