New leader highlights Purdue’s Global Trade Analysis Project’s wide-ranging global role

Purdue enjoys global renown in fields ranging from agriculture and aviation to engineering and chemistry, but a lesser known, yet highly impactful, field should be added to that list: analysis of critical global issues.

For more than three decades, Purdue’s Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) has earned high praise for its role in global economic analysis of trade, climatic change, biodiversity and pollution.

Channing Arndt, GTAP’s new director, says that GTAP has grown to become a vital resource widely used by researchers around the world. More than 30,000 researchers, economists and policymakers in more than 175 countries have relied on GTAP’s data, models, software and training.

“I am proud and excited to lead this extraordinarily impactful project that plays an integral role in research and policy discussions,” Arndt says.

A unique facet of GTAP is that it is partially funded and guided by the GTAP Consortium, which comprises more than 30 leading national, international and private institutions, including the World Trade Organization, U.S. Department of Commerce, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and European Commission Trade Directorate.

According to Arndt, a key GTAP aim is to lower the barriers to high-quality analysis of global issues. GTAP’s publicly available data sets are the project’s unique “sweet spot.”

“Some people might be surprised that Purdue is GTAP’s home,” Arndt says. “It is the brainchild of Professor Thomas W. Hertel. More than 30 years ago, Tom, armed with a strong interest in global issues, recognized that there was a lack in quality global data sets. He founded GTAP to meet that need.”

The project now harbors the largest concentration of global economic modelers in the world, and its researchers are thought leaders across an array of global issues.

“GTAP provides an extraordinary public service, which fits with Purdue’s land-grant mission,” Arndt says.

“Under Tom’s leadership as well as Dominique van der Mensbrugghe, who led the center for the past decade, GTAP thrives as a ‘global project, supported by a consortium of leading national, international and private institutions,’ that is based in academia at Purdue.”

To learn more about GTAP, email Channing Arndt or visit the GTAP website.