13 - 16 April 2026 - TIPS Office: 234 Lange Street, Nieuw Muckleneuk, PTA
Price: R16 000 vat included (per delegate) and $1000 ( for delegates from developed countries)
Acceptance deadline: 3 April 2026
The economy is a system. Disturbances to one part, which might be caused by policies or by unanticipated shocks, can have consequences for other parts. Responses to these knock-on effects may create feed backs, enhancing or constraining the initial impact. Understanding these system wide effects can be important for policy design, since they determine how the costs and benefits of a policy are distributed throughout the economy.
Most graduates of economics programmes have in their toolbox microeconomic methods, for analysing the behaviour of individual agents and markets, and macroeconomic methods, for analysing the economy as a whole. These are powerful tools, but the latter do not give the detailed view of the economy that policy analysts often want, while the usual ceteris paribus assumption of microeconomics can often be inappropriate when the shocks are large.
Input-output and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models provide tools to examine the economy as a whole while also incorporating sufficient detail to address impacts on sectors and income distribution. Wassily Leontief published his first input-output paper in 1936. Leif Johansen published his pioneering CGE model in 1960. However, although there was substantial work developing both these approaches in the decades before 1990, they both remained rather niche approaches until the rise of cheap computing power and modern data.
Since 2000 there has been an explosion in the literature using these tools, extending the range of their application. The methods, either by themselves or in conjunction with models from other disciplines, are being brought to bear on a wide and expanding range of issues of concern to the modern world: climate change, renewable energy, AI, water scarcity, regional integration, trade in value added, value chains, the causes and consequences of macroeconomic fluctuations.
Approach
The workshop will introduce participants to the databases on which economywide models are based: supply and use tables, input-output tables and social accounting matrices. It will then cover the fundamental methods of multiplier analysis and illustrate how they can be extended to a range of issues. The teaching method focuses on hands-on practical application. All models are implemented in Microsoft Excel.
Upon completion, participants will possess both the theoretical foundation and practical expertise necessary for linear economy-wide impact analysis. The workshop also offers valuable preparation for process managers required to interpret such analyses, and provides essential groundwork for those wishing to pursue computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling.
A subsequent CGE modelling workshop will be available for interested participants.
Course facilitators
Rob Davies is a Zimbabwean economist who lives in Harare. He previously served as Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Zimbabwe. His academic career includes roles as a visiting professor at Swarthmore University in the United States, a visiting senior lecturer at SOAS in the United Kingdom, and a visiting research fellow at the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) in Pretoria, South Africa. He is a director of the Trade Law Centre (tralac), a public benefit organisation based in Cape Town. He has published extensively and collaborated with organisations such as the World Bank, South African National Treasury, TIPS, UNU-WIDER, Global Trade Analysis Project, and the International Food Policy Research Institute. His recent work uses Computable General Equilibrium models to address policy issues such as automation, labour market polarisation, carbon taxes, electricity shortages in South Africa, climate change in Zimbabwe, the green economy in Vietnam, and COVID impacts.
Dirk van Seventer is a New Zealand-based applied economist specialising in macroeconomics, trade and labour market economics, multisector input-output and Computable General Equilibrium modelling. After completing his Masters in Economics at the Rijksuniversiteit van Groningen in the Netherlands, he moved to South Africa where he worked as economic researcher at the University of Stellenbosch during the 1980s, the Development Bank of Southern Africa during the early 1990s and TIPS in the late 1990s. In early 2000 he followed his family to New Zealand where he worked at the Department of Labour for six years as a Principal Information Analyst. Currently, Dirk is an associate economist with the consulting firm Infometrics in Wellington, New Zealand and a modelling expert with Genesis Analytics Consulting in Johannesburg. He has published widely in South African and international journals. and has contributed to building numerous Social Accounting Matrices for several countries in Southern Africa and Asia.
For more information contact Rozale Sewduth at Rozale@tips.org.za