as befit both the historical importance and the current relevance of the protectionist issue, roughly a quarter of this book is devoted to this subject. over the years, international economists have developed a simple yet powerful analytical framework for determining the effects of government policies that affect international trade. this framework not only predicts the effects of trade policies, it also allows cost-benefit analysis and defines criteria for determining when government intervention is good for the economy. we present this framework in chapter 8 and 9 and use it to discuss a number of policy issues in those chapters and in the following two.