A Practical Guide to Trade Policy Analysis, co-published by the WTO and UNCTAD's Virtual Institute has been launched. WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy and UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi describe it as a "state-of-the-art" tool for policy analysis and a contribution to a more level playing field in trade relations.
The handbook illustrates and explains the tools and methods commonly used in the analysis of international trade and trade policy. It will be of particular interest to policymakers, trade economists and development practitioners dealing with international trade and trade policy issues.
The handbook is the outcome of joint work by the Research Section of UNCTAD's Division on International Trade and the WTO's Economic Research and Statistic Division.
In a joint foreword for the handbook, Mr. Lamy and Mr. Supachai observed that good policy needs to be backed by good analysis. By bringing together the most widely used approaches in a single volume, the handbook allows the reader to compare methodologies and to select the best-suited to address the issues of today.
The handbook, they noted, has been developed in response to requests from a number of research institutions and universities in developing countries for training on trade policy analysis. Despite the growing use of quantitative economics in policy making, no existing publications directly address the full range of practical questions covered here. These include matters as simple as where to find the best trade and tariff data and how to develop a country’s basic statistics on trade.
Guidance is also provided on more complicated issues, such as the choice of the best analytical tools for answering questions ranging from the economic impact of membership of the WTO and preferential trade agreements to how trade will affect income distribution within a country.
The handbook and the accompanying datasets/examples/exercises can be downloaded at: http://vi.unctad.org/tpa/
