International Trade In Services

This title provides a comprehensive introduction to the key issues in trade and liberalization of services. Providing a useful overview of the players involved, the barriers to trade, and case studies in a number of service industries, this is ideal for policymakers and students interested in trade.

The services sector is key to economic growth, competitiveness, and poverty alleviation. Comprising more than two-thirds of the world economy, services are now commonly traded across borders, helped by technological progress and the increased mobility of persons. In recent years, a number of developing countries have looked at trade in services as a means to both respond to domestic supply shortages and to diversify and boost exports. Any country can tap into the trade potential of services, but not every country can become a services hub across sectors. The opening of the services sector potentially comes with large benefits, but also fears and costs that should not be overlooked. This book provides useful guidelines for the assessment of a country s trade potential, and a roadmap for successful opening and export promotion in select services sectors. It looks at both the effects of increased imports and exports, and provides concrete examples of developing country approaches that have either succeeded or failed to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of opening. It focuses on sectors that have been rarely analyzed through the trade lens, and/or have a fast growing trade potential for developing countries. These sectors are: accounting, construction, distribution, engineering, environmental, health, information technology, and legal services. This book is designed for non-trade specialists to understand how trade can help improve access to key services in developing countries, and for trade specialists to understand the specific characteristics of each individual sector. It will be a useful tool for governments to design successful trade opening or promotion strategies, and for the private sector and consumers to advocate sound domestic policy reforms accompanying an offensive trade agenda.

International Regulation of Trade in Services provides commentary and primary source materials on the concepts of international trade in services and the broad legal regime that governs it. This five-volume set is a compilation of global, regional, and European Union legislation that affects international trade in services.Updated approximately seven times per year.

Quantitative measures of international exchange have historically focused on trade in tangible products or capital. However, services have recently become a larger portion of developed economies and international trade, and will only increase in the future. In International Trade in Services and Intangibles in the Era of Globalization, Marshall Reinsdorf and Matthew J. Slaughter examine new and emerging patterns of trade, especially the growing importance of transactions involving services or intangible assets such as intellectual property. A distinguished team of contributors analyzes the challenges involved in measuring trade in intangibles, the comparative advantages enjoyed by United States service industries, and the heightened international competition for jobs, capital investment, economic growth, and tax revenue that results from trade in services. This comprehensive volume will be necessary reading for scholars seeking to understand the rapidly changing global economy.

The Manual sets out an internationally agreed framework for the compilation and reporting of statistics on international trade in services in the broad sense. It addresses the growing need, including in international trade negotiations and agreements, for more detailed, comparable, and comprehensive statistics on this type of trade in its various forms. The recommendations will enable countries to progressively expand and structure the information they compile in an internationally comparable way. The Manual conforms with and explicitly relates to the System of National Accounts 1993 and the fifth edition of the IMF’s Balance of Payments Manual. It is published jointly by the United Nations, European Union, IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, and World Trade Organization.

This book considers how the interplay between multilateral and preferential liberalisation of trade in services increasingly raises concerns, both from the perspective of the beneficiaries of such liberalisation (whose rights are uncertain) and that of regulators (whose regulatory autonomy is constrained). The author shows how these concerns lead to vast underutilisation of, and strong prejudices against, the benefits of services liberalisation. The book meticulously analyses and compares the EU's obligations under the GATS and the services chapters of several RTAs to finally assess the merits of the raised concerns.

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.

The first comprehensive analysis of the applicability of international trade law to digital services at multilateral and regional levels.