Wisconsin National Data Consortium

Overview

Analysis of policies affecting markets in multiple countries requires both data and theory. The Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) consortium provides data, and the analyst confronts this data with a theoretical perspective. Despite some limitations in data coverage and quality, a key practical constraint lies in the informed translation of theoretical insights into quantitative policy evidence.

The Wisconsin National Data Consortium (WiNDC) is a research project which has been formed to provide the analytic community with a dataset and a collection of companion models which facilitate evidence-based economic research on the national and sub-national level. The tools are open-source and may be used for multi-sectoral, multi-household general equilibrium analysis.

The most recently WiNDC dataset is calibrated to align with GTAP version 10. The core data incorporates (approximately) quintile disaggregation of households, all US states, 10 regions/countries representing international trade and 32 economic sectors for 2014.

Tuesday's lectures and modeling exercises introduce the use of the GTAP-WiNDC framework for doing applied trade policy analysis with a focus on the geographic and household impacts of policy. We will focus on the impact of the steel tariffs introduced in the previous administration and, we will also consider simulations related to ongoing disruptions in international oil markets.