What Is Policy Analysis and Why Does It Matter?

Policy analysis is an interdisciplinary applied discipline that emerged in the United States in the late 1960s.

It integrates methodologies from multiple fields, including political science, sociology, and economics, to systematically study the full lifecycle of public policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. Its core research focuses on policy consultation, implementation evaluation, and comparative analysis, emphasizing a data-driven and evidence-based research paradigm.

The Importance of Policy Analysis
As a systematic and scientific research method, policy analysis is crucial for government decision-making and implementation.
  1. Improving the Scientificity of Decision-Making
Data-Based Decision-Making: Policy analysis collects and analyzes relevant data to provide decision-makers with objective and accurate information, preventing blind and arbitrary decision-making.
Evaluating Alternative Options: By comparing and evaluating multiple alternative options, policy analysis can identify optimal and suboptimal decision-making options, ensuring their rationality and effectiveness.
Predicting Potential Risks: Policy analysis can identify and assess potential risks and challenges encountered during policy implementation, providing decision-makers with early warnings and recommendations, allowing them to formulate countermeasures in advance.
  1. Enhance Policy Feasibility
Optimal Resource Allocation: Policy analysis helps determine the resources and costs required for a policy, as well as the appropriate allocation of resources, ensuring smooth implementation within limited resources.
Coordination and Balancing of Interests: Policy analysis can reveal the demands and conflicts among different stakeholders, providing decision-makers with strategies and methods for aligning their interests, thereby enhancing policy acceptability and enforceability.
Considering Social Impact: Policy analysis focuses not only on the direct economic impact of a policy, but also on its comprehensive impact on society, culture, and the environment, ensuring that the policy does not trigger negative side effects during implementation.
  1. Promote Continuous Policy Improvement
Monitoring and Evaluation: Policy analysis establishes a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation mechanism to track the progress and effectiveness of policy implementation and promptly identify any problems or shortcomings.
Feedback and Adjustment: Based on the results of monitoring and evaluation, policy analysis can provide feedback and recommendations to decision-makers, prompting continuous adjustment and optimization of policies in practice to adapt to the evolving social environment and needs.
Accumulating Lessons Learned: Both successful cases and failed lessons learned during the policy analysis process are valuable assets that can serve as reference and lessons for future policymaking, promoting the continuous improvement and development of the policy system.

The so-called policy refers to policy factors that may have an impact on the stock market
It can be divided into three main aspects:
(1) Macroeconomic orientation, such as the government's economic guidelines, long-term development strategies, and ideas and measures for institutional reform and state-owned enterprise reform.
(2) Economic policy, including changes in government fiscal policy, tax policy, industrial policy, monetary policy, and foreign trade policy.
(3) New policies and regulations issued in response to the development requirements of the securities market, such as price limits and investment fund management regulations.