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This issue paper aims at introducing selected analytical approaches for quantitative analysis of the socio-economic impacts of policies. In the first part of the document, after considering a set of basic questions that a quantitative policy impact analysis has usually to address in order to be useful for informing decision-making processes; some definitions and insights on policy-relevant elements such as policy objectives, policy instruments and impact models are provided. The document then briefly describes the use of counterfactual analysis for socio-economic policy impact analysis.

The second part of the work focuses on the review of selected quantitative analytical approaches frequently applied to assess policy impacts, such as Value Chain Analysis (VCA), Multi-Market Models (MMM), Computable General Equilibrium models (CGE) etc. For each of these, after a description of their “technical” features, an assessment in terms of data, time and expertise requirements for their practical application is provided. For each approach, some real case applications have also been identified and summarily described, considering the specific policy field of application, the hypotheses to be tested and the policy-relevant conclusions provided by their authors. The last section provides some concluding remarks about the use of tools for quantitative policy impact analysis in decision-making processes.

This paper is part of the FAO Policy series: EASYPol-Resources for policy making (in agriculture, rural development and food security). To find other EASYPol series' resources, go to the Policy Support and Governance website>Resources and type "EASYPol" in the free text search.