© Scott McDonald
Estimating a Social Accounting Matrix: Online Course
Scott McDonald
(Based on work with Sherman Robinson)
This course is self-directed and unsupported self-learning course
There are six (6) modules in the course:
- Theory of Social Accounting
- Aggregate SAMs
- Micro SAMs
- RAS to reconcile SAMs
- SAM Estimation with Info-metrics: Theory and Application
- SAM Estimation with Info-metrics: Extensions
This is an advanced course designed to meet the requirements of participants who want to understand the processes involved in estimating a SAM. This course uses advanced GAMS skills: participants must have well developed GAMS skills with appreciable GAMS experience.
The first module provides an introduction to the theory of social accounting; the primary objectives are to establish a common understanding and language. The second module involves deriving prior aggregate SAMs from national accounts data, while the third module involves disaggregating the aggregate SAMs to derive prior SAMs. Both emphasise that the available data will be incomplete, inconsistent and unreliable and the need for a theoretically consistent estimation method. Module introduces the mathematical methods for estimation using the RAS. Modules five and six introduce theories of estimation with limited information and the related maximum and cross entropy metrics. The application components use the SAMEST programme to estimate a SAM and involve progressively adding information and fine tuning the options offered in the SAMEST programme.
The course is open source and unsupported, i.e., no tutorial supported is available.
The materials are delivered from www.cgemod.org.uk
Participants should plan a SAM estimation project of their own that will be undertaken in parallel with the course: experience indicates that embedding the skills explored in this course is important.
Further information
Contact: Scott McDonald (scott@cgemod.org.uk)