International Competition In Services

Production of services now dominates economic activity in the United States and most other nations. It is thus natural to find increasing attention on the part of U.S. policymakers to international competition in service activities. Yielding to strong pressure from the United States, members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreed in September 1986 to include services in the new "Uruguay Round" of multilateral trade negotiations. But there remains widespread skepticism regarding the prospects for these negotiations. This paper surveys the main issues and evidence relating to U.S. international competition in services. It reviews the forces that have catapulted services to the top of the agenda for the new GATT round; the conceptual issues raised by international competition in services; the growing importance of services in U.S. production and in international transactions; the relationship of services growth to "deindustrialization" of the U.S. economy; the nature and motivation of barriers to international competition in services and their relationship to nontariff distortions of merchandise trade; and the choices awaiting U.S. officials in forthcoming bilateral and multilateral negotiations

This book addresses the crucial question of America's adjustment to changes in the international economy. It examines policies that will deal effectively with the continuing erosion of the U.S. share of exports and production in world markets and explores in particular the debate on "industrial policy."

In the new global economy, more countries have opened up to international competition and rapid capital flows. However, in the triad the process of globalization is rather asymmetric. With a rising role of multinational companies there are favorable prospects for higher global growth and economic catching-up, respectively. Theoretical analysis suggests key ingredients of sustained growth, but there is also a new concept of a long-term equilibrium income gap in which convergence is rather unlikely. The analysis also picks up European and US labor market issues in the context of economic globalization and raises the question of which EU policies in the field of labor market reform and of innovation policies are adequate.

Changes in the dynamics of economic activities since the last decades of the 20th century have yielded major changes in the composition of industries and the division of labor and production across different regions of the world. Despite these shifts in the global economy, some industries have remained competitive even without relocating their operations overseas. Industries and Global Competition examines how and why the specificities of certain industries and firms determined their choice of location and competitiveness. This volume identifies the major drivers of this process and explains why some firms and industries moved to other parts of world while others did not. Relocation was not the sole determinant of the success or failure of firms and industries. Indeed some were able to reinvent themselves at their original location and build new competitive advantages. The path that each industry or firm took varied. This book argues that the specific characteristics of each industry defined the conditions of competitiveness and provide a wide range of cases as illustrations. Aimed at scholars, researchers and acadmeics in the fields of business history, international business and related disciplines Industries and Global Competition exmaines the unique questions; How and why did the specificities of certain industries and firms determine their choice of location and competitiveness? Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book provides one of the first interdisciplinary reviews of the relationship between services, globalisation and trade liberalisation as we enter the twenty-first century. Written by academics and policymakers, it contains a detailed analysis of the characteristics of service trade and of recent and current service trade negotiations.