Elasticity

[Mahmoud]

Dear all, 
I am facing a problem when using the full partial equilibrium features of TIMES. I ran a BAU case to get the com_bprices and then ran another case that includes demand elasticities. I am getting a warning in the QA file: the warning says: "Elastic Demand but either COM_BPRICE/ELAST/VOC missing". the attributes elast and voc are specified. 

Here's a link to the folder containng the dd files and the com_bprice file: https://www.dropbox.com/home?preview=NetZero-Elastic.7z
Any ideas about what could be the problem in my case? 

Thank you very much in advance
Mahmoud

[AKanudia]

did you include the _DP GDX file reference in the case definition?

[Antti-L]

@Mahmoud The link  https://www.dropbox.com/home?preview=NetZero-Elastic.7z  does not work.  Every Dropbox user has a "home" folder, but the file NetZero-Elastic.7z is not in my home folder, it is in yours. For file sharing, I think you should provide a special sharing link instead...

[Mahmoud]

@Amit I think that I included the _DP.GDX file. Please find attached a screenchot that shows how I did. 
@Antti  does this work https://www.dropbox.com/s/gyzqz6mowt2ud9...ic.7z?dl=0 ?

[AKanudia]

OK, the _DP gdx inclusion looks good.

[Antti-L]

You seem to be missing the point of the warnings in the QA_Check.log.  For example, for the region AT the warnings are only about the following four commodities (which are thus missing either COM_BPRICE / COM_ELAST / COM_VOC :

*10 WARNING       -     R=AT           C=R_DetH
*10 WARNING       -     R=AT           C=R_Flat
*10 WARNING       -     R=AT           C=R_SDetH
*10 WARNING       -     R=AT           C=TRai_Pas_Hspd

Are you saying that you nonetheless have defined COM_BPRICE and COM_ELAST and COM_VOC for these commodities?

[Mahmoud]

Unless I am mistaking and then misusing this version of TIMES, i did define COM_BPRICE, COM_ELAST and COM_VOC for the aforementioned couples (region, commodity). here's a screenshot of the com_bprice (with a filter on the column commodity). as you can see in the file demand_elastpar.dd (in the dropbox folder), elasticity params are definied for the same couples. 
Their might be somthing wrong with my run but I am runing out of ideas here 

[Antti-L]

Ahh, yes you have indeed defined COM_ELAST and COM_VOC for them, and you have a COM_BPRICE in the GDX file.   But the problem is that your prices for many commodities are bad: they are negative.  I looked at the base prices, and there are numerous negative prices for the demands...   These negative prices are ignored because they cannot be handled, and therefore you get those warnings.

Indeed, I can see that the model is the well-known JRC-EU model, which for which dummy imports have not been cleaned up (at least the publicly available version).  This means that your demand prices can in general be quite bad.  In general, one should at best be using the genuine PE mode of TIMES with elastic demands only with models where the dummy imports can be disabled altogether, in order to have well-behaving prices. Therefore, the first thing you should do is to remove all dummy imports from the model, and then disable the dummy import processes from the baseline and subsequent elastic runs.

But of course, one can also just ignore any problems that may caused by dummy imports or ill-behaving prices, and any warnings, solely at one's own risk.  

[Antti-L]

Correction:  You have not defined COM_ELAST for e.g. R_DetH and R_SDeth in the region AT.
But this is not an error, it is just a warning issued for your information.  

As mentioned, the main issue here is that you have many bad prices, e.g. for TRai_Pas_Hspd.

[Mahmoud]

Thank you Antti for your answer. Indeed the model is derived from the JET model (with additional changes) and in fact there are many negative prices due to taxes on demand overproduction. I have been trying to clean the model for a while but in vain... If by any chance you have succeded removing dummy imports for this model I will be more than happy to take your inputs !
Thank you Antti and Amit for the quick replies.