Assessing Economic Impacts of Thailand’s Fiscal Reallocation between Biofuel Subsidy and Transportation Investment: Application of Recursive Dynamic General Equilibrium Model

Abstract

This study examined the economy-wide effects of reallocating the biofuel subsidy to invest in transportation using a recursive dynamics computable general equilibrium model. The constructed model consists of 35 sectors, 42 commodities, and 3 institutions (household, government, and the rest of the world). Three scenarios were simulated. In the first scenario, the subsidy of gasohol and biodiesel is completely removed, whereas, in the second and third scenarios, half of the removed subsidy is reallocated to finance investment in road freight transportation and road public transportation. The simulation results show that reallocating the biofuel subsidy to invest in road public transportation can lead to the highest long-term economic growth and has the lowest impact on the consumer price index (CPI). All findings suggest that policymakers should maintain continuous investment in transportation and prioritize this investment policy over the fuel price distortion scheme.

Keywords

• computable general equilibrium
• investment
• transportation
• logistics
• subsidy