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| AgTrade |
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AgTrade is a suite of agricultural commodity models known as AGM (ABARE grains model), ADM (ABARE dairy model), ASM (ABARE sheep meat model). It was developed from the OECD Ag Link model and contains detailed representations of commodity markets, including prices, crop areas, livestock numbers, production, consumption, trade and stocks.
AgTrade includes all major producing, consuming and trading countries and explicitly models policies in the form of market access, export subsidy and domestic support policy in most represented countries. It covers grains such as wheat, coarse grains, oilseed meals and oilseed oils, and palm oil; dairy products such as milk, butter, cheese, skim milk powder, and wholemilk powder; and sheep meat products, including sheep and mutton as well as live sheep. AgTrade capabilities include:
- medium term baseline projections of Australian prices, production, consumption, trade and stocks for the main agricultural commodities
- quantitative support for analysis of domestic policies in the United States and European Union
- quantitative underpinnings for analysis of global trade policies for grains, dairy products and sheep meat
- simulating the impacts of economic shocks on commodity markets and trade
- quantifying the impacts of changes to supply or demand on commodity markets and trade.
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| Ausregion |
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Ausregion is ABARE’s model of the Australian economy that depicts the eight states and territories as well as sub-state regions. Ausregion is an in house ABARE development with a range of unique ABARE developed innovations and characteristics.
Ausregion brings to ABARE comprehensive capability for quantitative assessments at the national, state and regional level of a broad range of issues.
Full account is taken of the interactions and interdependencies between sectors and elements of the economy enabling Ausregion to take full account of direct and flow-on impacts of the issues being assessed. In depicting issues facing the Australian economy, Ausregion can be used in conjunction with ABARE’s suite of sector specific partial equilibrium models as well as GTEM, ABARE’s global model.
AUSTATE is a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Australian economy that depicts the Australian economy at the level of the eight states and territories. AUSTATE is an in house ABARE development with a range of unique innovations and characteristics.
AUSTATE brings to ABARE comprehensive capability for quantitative assessments at the state level for a broad range of issues.
In depicting issues facing the Australian economy, AUSTATE can be used in conjunction with its suite of sector specific partial equilibrium models as well as GTEM, ABARE's global model. |
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| E4cast |
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E4cast is a partial equilibrium model of the Australian energy sector used by ABARE to project Australia’s long term energy consumption, production and trade. Developed in 2000 and regularly updated since, E4cast has improved ABARE’s ability to produce detailed energy projections of the type regularly published by ABARE and its predecessor for the past 25 years. The original model framework was described in 2001 in ‘Australian energy: national and state projections to 2019-20’.
In E4cast, energy consumption is projected by fuel, by industry, and by region. Two types of fuels are modeled – primary and final. Industries are divided into two types, energy converters and final end users. This common structure of fuel use by industry is replicated in each of the model’s seven regions – New South Wales (including the Australian Capital Territory), Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory. National figures are produced by summing the regional totals.
In each region, conversion activities such as electricity generation and petroleum refining deliver energy to final end users such as transport, manufacturing, mining, agriculture, residential and commercial. The primary and final fuels consumed in each region can include crude oil and petroleum products, LPG, black and brown coal, coke and coal byproducts, natural gas, electricity, and renewable's (hydroelectricity, biomass, biogas, wind and solar energy).
As with most models used by analysts to project energy consumption, the main consumption drivers in E4cast are real incomes, industry output and fuel prices.
Since 2000, ABARE has continued to enhance E4cast to include in it specific production, trade and government policy detail of interest to industry and policy makers. For example, because oil and gas production tends to overlap state or territory boundaries, oil and gas production has been modeled at the basin level. To reflect recent developments in energy supply interconnection, interstate trade in electricity and natural gas has also been modeled. Finally, to reflect the likely long term impact of government policies on Australian energy consumption overall, ABARE has modeled specific government policies that May influence energy consumption at either the national or the state or territory level. |
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| FISH |
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FISH comprises a suite of fish models—namely, aquaculture farm models (aqua) and integrated biological and economic (bioeconomic) models for a particular area (region, country or country group).
The aqua models use production and financial data, and risk and uncertainty information collected from farmers, industry and governments and provide quantitative support for undertaking stochastic investment analysis. The bioeconomic models integrate the biological models of fisheries with behavioral equations representing fishing effort and estimates of fishing costs, and determine catch and effort levels and net returns to the fishery under alternative scenarios. Recent applications include:
- stochastic investment analysis for abalone, murray cod, mussels, silver perch, snapper and yabbies
- evaluation of the alternative management proposals in the northern prawn fishery
- estimating the economic returns associated with alternative management options in the southern bluefin tuna fishery for the regions: Australia and New Zealand; Japan; Korea, Indonesia and Chinese Taipei.
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GTEM
Global trade and environment model |
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ABARE's dynamic multi region, multi sector, general equilibrium model of the world economy — the global trade and environment model (GTEM) — is the basis for our international policy analysis.
GTEM was developed by ABARE specifically to address policy issues with long term global dimensions, and was derived from the GTAP model. We apply GTEM in examining issues such as the climate change and the Kyoto Protocol, trade reform under the World Trade Organisation, and trends and issues in international energy markets.
Recently we have used GTEM to examine the impacts of the Kyoto Protocol targets set for the European Union and the most cost effective policy options; to assess the costs to Australian agriculture of United States farm bill subsidies; and to forecast the outlook for global coal markets to 2010.
GTEM captures the impact of policy changes on large numbers of economic variables in all sectors of the economy including gross domestic product, prices, consumption, production, trade, investment, efficiency, competiveness and greenhouse gas emissions. The strength of GTEM lies in its extensive detail: the database represents 66 regions and 62 sectors across the world economy.
GTEM policy analysis results are reported as deviations from a reference case. The reference case provides a 'business as usual' outlook for the economy in the absence of any major policy changes, which enables us to accurately quantify the impacts of policies on indicators of interest.
The intertemporal version of GTEM (GTEM-LR), which is currently at an advanced stage of implementation, incorporates forward looking dynamics critical to modeling the consumption and investment decisions made by economic agents.
We are also building the capacity of other organisations by making GTEM publicly available mainly for academic purposes.
Climate change
Our GTEM climate change analysis spans all key aspects of the Kyoto Protocol, including carbon sinks, the clean development mechanism, and international emissions trading, including the banking of emissions quota and market power. We also produce emission projections for various sectors and examine the impacts of domestic climate change policy strategies, such as carbon taxes and mandatory renewable energy targets.
This analysis is backed up by a comprehensive emissions database. It includes combustion and non combustion carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions, which account for around 98 per cent of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Energy
Our global energy analysis is also underpinned by GTEM, enabling us to examine the impacts of policies likely to affect global energy markets, such as energy subsidies and carbon taxes. The GTEM energy database includes the three categories of coal - brown thermal coal, black thermal coal, and coking coal - and competing fossil fuels, as well as electricity and major energy intensive industries that influence energy consumption. It also includes all the major energy producing and trading regions.GTEM-Coal is an extension of the model that enhances our capacity to model international coal markets. It has a more comprehensive treatment of the different types of coal, and includes sophisticated representation of technological change and interfuel substitution in the energy sector. It also captures substitution between technologies in response to changes in their relative costs.
We have developed a China module of GTEM specifically to enable analysis of China's energy sector at a provincial, regional or national level. This is particularly desirable given the influence China's energy sector can have on global energy markets. |
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| MOSAIC |
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MOSAIC is an integrated spatial optimisation framework for exploring future land use and management options at regional and landscape scales. Critical spatial interactions and linkages such as resource use externalities, transport costs and habitat configuration are supported explicitly. MOSAIC provides the capability of identifying the social, environmental and economic trade-offs of changing the way land is managed in particular landscape contexts.
MOSAIC is currently implemented as a plug-in to the EcoPlan software developed by Environment Australia. The user interface provides GIS functionality and utilises wizards to define scenarios — which specify how landscapes are valued—- and to develop allocations — which specify how each part of the landscape is managed. All the data used and generated by MOSAIC is contained in a Microsoft Access database. The actual optimisation is carried out by a C/C++ language dynamic link library which can be modified to suit different applications of the framework.
A prototype application of MOSAIC includes objectives relating to biodiversity, greenhouse emissions, dryland and river salinity, and economic costs and returns. MOSAIC builds on past collaborative research with Environment Australia and university ecologists. This earlier work has been used for terrestrial and marine reserve design in Australia. |
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| SALSA |
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SALSA is an integrated economic-hydrological model of land use and salinity processes in the Murray Darling Basin, that explicitly models externalities in resource use.
Key capabilities of the model include that it:
- generates baseline projections for land returns, and dryland and instream salinity
- enables scenario analysis for salinity control options and water allocation rules
- estimates the overall social opportunity cost
- identifies winners and losers from alternative resource use scenarios
Recent uses include:
- evaluation of salinity control options in the Murray Darling Basin
- estimation of the opportunity costs for environmental flows
- assessing externalities associated with improved water use efficiency and water trade
- impact analysis of climate change on water availability and salinity outcomes
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| SUGABARE |
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SUGABARE is an econometric model of world raw and refined sugar markets. It contains a detailed representation of the market in terms of prices, production, consumption, trade and stocks over time, and includes all major producing, consuming, toll refining, and trading countries. The trade and domestic policies of major exporting and importing countries are explicitly modeled in SUGABARE.
The model's capabilities include:
- medium term baseline projections of production, consumption, trade and stocks for each country/region and world raw and refined sugar prices
- quantitative evaluation of the impact of alternative domestic and trade policies of countries over time
- quantitative evaluation of the impact of change in other factors affecting supply or demand over time — for example, the impact of drought on supply and the impact of substitution of alternative sweeteners for sugar on demand
Examples of the model's use include assessing the impact of changes to Brazilian sugar—fuel ethanol policies for world sugar markets, and quantifying the impact of reforms to international sugar trade policies on major sugar exporting and importing countries. |
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| TRANSPLANT |
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TRANSPLANT is a comprehensive modeling framework for key land use activities in Australia. It was developed by ABARE to project emissions from agricultural activities in Australia, as well as to examine emission policy initiatives on Australian agricultural activities.
TRANSPLANT is a dynamic mathematical programming model that solves jointly the allocation of land and other inputs between regions, activities and time periods. A strength of TRANSPLANT is its simulation of competition for land and other inputs among competing agricultural activities.Key features of the model include:
- integration of agricultural activities
- comprehensive coverage of activities, commodities and emissions
- reflection of competition between activities
- its intertemporal nature
- appropriate spatial context
- consistency and compatibility with other key models/systems
TRANSPLANT is currently used to provide emissions projections to 2020 for Australian agriculture to the Australian Greenhouse Office.
ABARE is currently further developing TRANSPLANT to link other land use activities such as forestry, plantations, revegetation and land clearing into the existing framework. |
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