Constructing a 2012 social accounting matrix for Palestine

الملخص EN

The paper presents the construction of a 2012 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Palestine, which is an economy wide data framework for computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling.

The social accounting matrix represents the initial equilibrium and the market clearing conditions in the economy, because in the social accounting matrix framework expenditure has to equal income (row sum equal column sum) for every agent.

The social accounting matrix for Palestine differentiates between accounts for activities (production) and commodities.

The commodities are activity outputs and imports.

The separation of activities from commodities allows the differentiation between home consumption, which is activity based, and households marketed consumption, which is commodity based.

The government is divided into a core government account and tax account.

The taxes paid to tax account, which forwards its revenues to the government account.

In order to reconcile the inconsistency in the data which are gathered from various official sources, the study used Cross Entropy balancing technique to balance the prior social accounting matrix for Palestine.

This social accounting matrix can be used as the underlying data framework for analysis of the Palestinian economy using Computable General Equilibrium Models.