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Amongst other issues, the papers in this volume explore fundamental issues for empirical research on trade in services. It highlights the specific data requirements and conceptual challenges for modelling liberalisation of services.
The service sector is the most important sector for most developed economies being the largest contributor to gross domestic product, production, and employment. Developing economies on the other hand have a comparative advantage in labor services, however, the export of many of these services is limited by many restrictions on the temporary movement of labor imposed through domestic regulation. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the international trade in services focusing on market access in foreign markets. It also explains how developing economies are dealing with the issue of trade restrictions so as to spur development of the service sector.
This paper reviews the characteristics of international trade in services and of the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) framework, which was established to regulate it. Further liberalization of services trade in developing countries, as currently envisaged in the context of the WTO Doha Development Agenda, holds a number of potential benefits, such as underpinning the liberalization of goods trade, but it is also being resisted due to its potential adjustment costs. Two implications for IMF activities are examined: coherence among the three principal international economic institutions and sequencing with macroeconomic stabilization and regulatory reforms.
Countries that fully liberalize their telecommunications and financial services sectors may be able to expect economic growth rates up to 1.5 percentage points higher than rates in other countries. Mattoo, Rathindran, and Subramanian explain how the output growth effect from liberalizing the service sectors differs from the effect from liberalizing trade in goods. They also suggest using a policy-based rather than outcome-based measure of the openness of a country's services regime. They construct such openness measures for two key service sectors' basic telecommunications and financial services.Finally, the authors provide some econometric evidence - relatively strong for the financial sector and less strong, but nevertheless statistically significant, for the telecommunications sector - that openness in services influences long-run growth performance. Their estimates suggest that growth rates in countries with fully open telecommunications and financial services sectors are up to 1.5 percentage points higher than those in other countries.This paper - a product of Trade, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to assess the implications of liberalizing trade in services.
Konan and Maskus consider how service liberalization differs from goods liberalization in terms of welfare, the level and composition of output, and factor prices within a developing economy, in this case Tunisia. Despite recent movements toward liberalization, Tunisian service sectors remain largely closed to foreign participation and are provided at high cost relative to many developing nations. The authors develop a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Tunisian economy with multiple products and services and three trading partners. They model goods liberalization as the unilateral removal of product tariffs. Restraints on services trade involve both restrictions on cross-border supply (mode 1 in the GATS) and on foreign ownership through foreign direct investment (mode 3 in the GATS). The former are modeled as tariff-equivalent price wedges while the latter are comprised of both monopoly-rent distortions (arising from imperfect competition among domestic producers) and inefficiency costs (arising from a failure of domestic service providers to adopt least-cost practices). They find that goods-trade liberalization yields a gain in aggregate welfare and reorients production toward sectors of benchmark comparative advantage. However, a reduction of services barriers in a way that permits greater competition through foreign direct investment generates larger welfare gains. Service liberalization also requires lower adjustment costs, measured in terms of sectoral movement of workers, than does goods-trade liberalization. And it tends to increase economic activity in all sectors and raise the real returns to both capital and labor. The overall welfare gains of comprehensive service liberalization amount to more than 5 percent of initial consumption. The bulk of these gains come from opening markets for finance, business services, and telecommunications. Because these are key inputs into all sectors of the economy, their liberalization cuts costs and drives larger efficiency gains overall. The results point to the potential importance of deregulating services provision for economic development.This paper - product of the Trade, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the department to measure the benefits of services trade.
Trade in services, far more than trade in goods, is affected by a variety of domestic regulations, ranging from qualification and licensing requirements in professional services to pro-competitive regulation in telecommunications services. Experience shows that the quality of regulation strongly influences the consequences of trade liberalization. WTO members have agreed that a central task in the ongoing services negotiations will be to develop a set of rules to ensure that domestic regulations support rather than impede trade liberalization. Since these rules are bound to have a profound impact on the evolution of policy, particularly in developing countries, it is important that they be conducive to economically rational policy-making. This book addresses two central questions: What impact can international trade rules on services have on the exercise of domestic regulatory sovereignty? And how can services negotiations be harnessed to promote and consolidate domestic policy reform across highly diverse sectors? The book, with contributions from several of the world's leading experts in the field, explores a range of rule-making challenges arising at this policy interface, in areas such as transparency, standards and the adoption of a necessity test for services trade. Contributions also provide an in-depth look at these issues in the key areas of accountancy, energy, finance, health, telecommunications and transportation services.
This compelling two-volume collection presents the major literary contributions to the economic analysis of the consequences of trade liberalization on growth, productivity, labor market outcomes and economic inequality. Examining the classical theories that stress gains from trade stemming from comparative advantage, the selection also comprises more recent theories of imperfect competition, where any potential gains from trade can stem from competitive effects or the international transmission of knowledge. Empirical contributions provide evidence regarding the explanatory power of these various theories, including work on the effects of trade openness on economic growth, wages, and income inequality, as well as evidence on the effects of trade on firm productivity, entry and exit. Prefaced by an original introduction from the editor, the collection will to be an invaluable research resource for academics, practitioners and those drawn to this fascinating topic.
By reducing the costs of such trade services as transport, insurance, and finance, liberalizing trade in services can generate benefits in the markets for every kind of trade they facilitate. It can also stimulate the fragmentation of production of both goods and services, thus increasing international trade and the gains from trade even further. Deardorff examines the special role that trade liberalization in services industries can play in stimulating trade in both services and goods. International trade in goods requires inputs from such trade services as transportation, insurance, and finance, for example. Restrictions on services across borders and within foreign countries add costs and barriers to international trade. Liberalizing trade in services could also facilitate trade in goods, providing more benefits than one might expect from analysis merely of the services trade. To emphasize the point, Deardorff notes that the benefits for trade are arguably enhanced by the phenomenon of fragmentation. The more that production processes become split across locations, with the fragments tied together and coordinated by various trade services, the greater the gains from reductions in the costs of services.The incentives for such fragmentation can be greater across countries than within countries because of the greater differences in factor prices and technologies. But the service costs of international fragmentation can also be larger, especially if regulations and restrictions impede the international provision of services. As a result, trade liberalization in services can stimulate the fragmentation of production of both goods and services, thus increasing international trade and the gains from trade even further. Since fragmentation seems to characterize an increasing portion of world specialization, the importance of service liberalization is growing apace.This paper - a product of Trade, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to improve trade policy in goods and services.
Deep trade agreements (DTAs) cover not just trade but additional policy areas, such as international flows of investment and labor and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. Their goal is integration beyond trade or deep integration. These agreements matter for economic development. Their rules influence how countries (and hence, the people and firms that live and operate within them) transact, invest, work, and ultimately, develop. Trade and investment regimes determine the extent of economic integration, competition rules affect economic efficiency, intellectual property rights matter for innovation, and environmental and labor rules contribute to environmental and social outcomes. This Handbook provides the tools and data needed to analyze these new dimensions of integration and to assess the content and consequences of DTAs. The Handbook and the accompanying database are the result of collaboration between experts in different policy areas from academia and other international organizations, including the International Trade Centre (ITC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and World Trade Organization (WTO).