Assessing Prospective Trade Policy: Methods Applied to EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements

The European Union (EU) has provided trade preferences to the former colonies of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions since 1975 but these preferences have been of limited value and found to be incompatible with WTO rules. To continue preferences, economic partnership agreements (EPAs) were established, under which the EU and regional groupings of ACP countries offer reciprocal trade preferences to each other. This volume not only assesses EPAs and the impact on ACP countries, but also provides guidance for ACP negotiators in future negotiations and provides an evaluation of methods used to analyse the impact of trade reforms. In addition to overviews of the content and process of EPAs, estimates of impacts on a range of ACP countries and evaluating how they can contribute to development, these chapters focus on specific negotiating concerns such as legal commitments, adjustment costs, impacts on poverty and food security, and regulatory reforms.

Oliver Morrissey is Professor of Development Economics at the University of Nottingham.