GTAP 10 Data Base
The GTAP Data Base is a consistent representation of the world economy for a pre-determined reference year. Underlying the data base there are several data sources, including among others: national input-output (I-O) tables, trade, macroeconomic, energy and protection data. The underlying input-output tables are heterogeneous in sources, methodology, base years, and sectoral detail, thus for achieving consistency, substantial efforts are made to make the disparate sources comparable. For these reasons, the objective of the GTAP Data Base is not to provide I-O tables, but to facilitate the operation of economic simulation models ensuring users a consistent set of economic facts. Some users interested in particular Social Accounting Matrices (SAMs) use utilities written by researchers in the network to extract them. Users building I-O tables based on this information do that under their own risk, and are assumed to understand the limitations imposed by the process of data base construction.The GTAP Data Base is not a relational database of economic variables. Users interested in economic data only for comparative purposes are better served by sources such as the World Bank Development Indicators (WDI), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial statistics, or the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) statistics, to name a few. The data in the GTAP Data Base accurately depicts the magnitudes of economic variables, but they are presented in terms of the aggregates that serve Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeling.
The centerpiece of the Global Trade Analysis Project is the GTAP Data Base, a fully documented, publicly available global database containing complete bilateral trade information, transport and protection linkages. The GTAP Data Base represents the world economy and is utilized by thousands worldwide as a key input into most applied general equilibrium (AGE) analysis of global economic issues. An overview of GTAP 10 is available from the open access Journal of Global Economic Analysis at https://www.jgea.org/resources/jgea/ojs/index.php/jgea/article/view/77