MINIMAL - a Simplified General Equilibrium Model

A complete package containing software and documentation to learn (or teach) the basics of CGE modelling using GEMPACK. For classroom use or for private study. The package uses a simplified CGE model, MINIMAL, which might be of interest, for other, non-training, purposes. You can download the model without the whole package from the end of this page.
Prerequisite: A little economics. No GEMPACK licence or GEMPACK knowledge is required.

From this page you can download the material used for four CGE training courses held in Indonesia and the Philippines during 2001. New material was devised for these courses, including:

As originally used, this material took 4 full days to present and work through in class. It could well form the nucleus of a 3rd-year under-graduate semester course. Or it could be used by an individual as an introduction to CGE modelling using GEMPACK. The following documents are included:

You can download the documentation here: Download MINDOCS.ZIP (11 MB)

Preparing for the Practical GE course

Participants in the Practical GE course held in Melbourne and elsewhere are required to do some study beforehand: they must complete the exercises within the Computing Guide for MINIMAL and the 11 MINIMAL Simulations.

Installing the software

Download the file CRUNGEMX.EXE (25 MB) and save it in your TEMP folder.
CRUNGEMX.EXE is a self-extracting archive which, when you run it, launches a conventional install procedure. The install procedure tells you how much free hard disk space you will need. You might have to clean up your hard drive before proceeding. It's best to install into a folder named C:\CRUNGEM. Avoid directory names that contain spaces, commas or Asian characters or are more than 8 letters long. CRunGEM requires that the user has his own copy of the program on his own hard drive. The program cannot be installed on a network drive and used by several people at once. You can learn more about CRunGEM here.

Other models included in the package

As well as MINIMAL, a number of other models are included in the CRunGEM package:

Portuguese, Chinese and Korean translations

Thanks to Joaquim Ferreira (see below) and his friends, MINDOCS.ZIP includes a Portuguese translation of the main MINIMAL document [minport.pdf]. Also Chinese translations of all 3 documents -- thanks to Zhang Baojun of the College of Economics and Trade, Hunan University. And finally a Korean translation -- thanks to Sang-Ho Nam of the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.

MINIMAL without CRunGEM

For those who want the MINIMAL model without any of the teaching material.

As mentioned above, the CRunGEM program does not allow users to modify the equations or data. If you want to use MINIMAL with standard versions of GEMPACK programs (which do allow modification) you can download MINBASIC.ZIP, which contains only the basic MINIMAL files (equations [TAB], data [HAR] and experiments [CMF]). All these files are also contained in the main software download CRUNGEMX.EXE.
Download 7 KB zip

If you do not have a GEMPACK licence, you could investigate the Trial Version of GEMPACK, which is freely downloadable. It allows you to carry out the full range of modelling tasks, including running simulations with existing models, modifying models and building your own model, but is limited to smaller models. MINIMAL is small enough to be used with this version of GEMPACK.

MINIMAL globalization

A series of 66 country/regional databases are freely available which can be used with the MINIMAL model. These are derived from Version 5 of the GTAP database. See here for more information.

Multiregional-version of MINIMAL

Professor Titular Joaquim Bento de Souza Ferreira-Filho of the Escola Superior de Agricultura "Luiz de Queiroz", Universidade de São Paulo, Piracicaba, São Paulo State, Brazil, has devised a multiregional version of MINIMAL. The model is 'bottoms-up': each region is modelled as a separate economy, linked to the rest via a trade matrix. More advanced GEMPACK users can download this model and an English document describing it from here [100 KB zip]


Complaints and suggestions to Mark Horridge


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