Tools for Applied Goods Trade Policy Analysis: An Introduction

Abstract

Soamiely Andriamananjara, Olivier Cadot, and Jean-Marie Grether discuss the data and statistical instruments available for applied trade policy analysis. A variety of analytical and statistical tools now permit trade analysts to create a rigorous but accessible portrait of the policy-relevant features of a country's trade patterns and the consequences of its policy choices. The authors examine the practical data and implementation issues for the most widely used tools to enable the reader to understand how these models are constructed and what can and cannot be gleaned from them. Among the topics covered are methods for presenting a picture of a country's trade performance and standard measures of its trade policy stance, the econometric techniques that can be used to assess ex post the effects of trade policies on trade flows and key features of the domestic economy, and the principle attributes of the tools used in the ex-ante assessment of trade policy.