Journal of Economic Literature
Book Reviews
2026-08-28
Alan Woodland of University of Sydney reviews “Measuring the Restrictiveness of International Trade Policy” by James E. Anderson, J. Peter Neary,. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Presents an approach to the problem of measuring trade restrictiveness that builds on the standard theory of policy reform in open economies. Discusses a nontechnical introduction to measuring trade policy restrictiveness; tariff reform in general equilibrium; the trade restrictiveness index (TRI); the mercantilist trade restrictiveness index (MTRI); trade reform, trade restrictiveness, and tariff structure; trade reform with tariffs and quotas; the TRI and MTRI with quotas; alternative economic environments; aggregating trade restrictions in modeling; a general framework for measuring policy restrictiveness; other policy distortions; alternative reference points; quantity aggregates; and measuring trade restrictiveness in a simple computable general-equilibrium model. Anderson is Neenan Professor of Economics at Boston College. Neary is Professor of Political Economy at University College Dublin. Index.”