KITE

Julian Hinz — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Open the KITE Lab → Shift a tariff and watch the world adjust: live results for 81 economies, computed in your browser.

KITE (Kiel Institute Trade Policy Evaluation) is an open-source framework for quantitative trade-policy counterfactuals. It implements general-equilibrium trade models in the New Quantitative Trade Model tradition and solves them in changes with exact hat algebra: given a baseline and a policy scenario (tariffs, non-tariff measures, carbon taxes), it returns the counterfactual changes in welfare, production, and trade flows.

The model has originally been developed by Caliendo & Parro (2015), building a multi-sector version of the Ricardian trade model of Eaton & Kortum (2002), where countries produce and sell domestically as well as internationally according to their relative comparative advantage. The model extends this framework by allowing for extensive intra- and international input-output linkages where goods and services may enter as both final and intermediate goods. Trade policy is conducted through the tightening or easing of trade barriers in form of tariffs and non-tariff measures.

KITE has been used to evaluate trade agreements (e.g. NAFTA, TTIP), trade disputes (e.g. the US–China trade war) and economic sanctions. It derives the economic consequences for production, value added and welfare based on pre-defined scenarios that specify the policies to be evaluated.

A detailed description of the framework is available in the white paper “The KITE Model Suite: A Quantitative Framework for International Trade Analysis” (with Hendrik Mahlkow and Joschka Wanner, KITE White Paper, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, 2025).

Version 26.10 (“Brisk Fehmarn”, October 2026) ships three models:

Caliendo, Lorenzo, and Fernando Parro. 2015. “Estimates of the Trade and Welfare Effects of NAFTA.” The Review of Economic Studies 82 (1): 1–44.
Sonali Chowdhry, Julian Hinz, Katrin Kamin and Joschka Wanner. 2024. “Brothers in arms: The value of coalitions in sanctions regimes.” Economic Policy 39 (118): 471–512.
Hendrik Mahlkow and Joschka Wanner. 2023. “The Carbon Footprint of Global Trade Imbalances." CESifo Working Paper 10729. Carbon tax in a climate club with border carbon adjustment and export rebates, new in this release.

The full KITE suite comprises 13 models, available on request via kite@kielinstitut.de.

KITE is licensed under GPL-3. Documentation is at kite-model.org/r/.

Install from GitHub via the remotes package:


install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("julianhinz/KITE")

climate policy · Julian Hinz

KITE