Since the mid-1980s the world have been witnessing significant and rapid changes in technology, institutions, and the economic environment. The â??globalizationâ? of knowledge, capital finance, and of labor markets brought new developmental challenges to the less developed countries. This emerging new economic environment has raised serious questions about the relevance of some established strategies and policies for development, methodologies for assessing such policies, and the underlying economic theory framework. For several decades models for policy evaluation, in various variants, have been used extensively by public and private agencies. But, as El-Issawy indicates in his summary statement at the end of this volume, macroeconomic models are as yet far from being useful in a significant or substantial way to policymakers. Economists involved in the modeling field are aware of this deficiency.
For years economists have developed and refined empirical models to evaluate economic policies. The evolution of macroeconomic models have been based on a continuous dialogue between development in economic theory, structural specifications, estimation techniques, and data quality. The present volume is an attempt to take stock of recent developments in the field and their application in the Arab and developing countries. It is based on the proceedings of the first International Conference on Economic Policy Evaluation Models organized by the Arab Planning Institute, Kuwait and held in Tunis, Tunisia on June 12-14, 1995.