Liberalizing Trade in Services : A Survey

Since the mid 1980s a substantial amount of research has been undertaken on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the World Trade Organization or regional trade agreements, especially the European Union, but an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of services sector liberalizati...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hoekman, Bernard
Format: Policy Research Working Paper
Language:English
en_US
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2012
Subjects:
AIR
GDP
MFN
TAX
WTO
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2006/10/7114867/liberalizing-trade-services-survey
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9004
Description
Summary:Since the mid 1980s a substantial amount of research has been undertaken on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the World Trade Organization or regional trade agreements, especially the European Union, but an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of services sector liberalization. This paper surveys the literature, focusing on contributions that investigate the determinants of international trade and investment in services, the potential gains from greater trade (and liberalization), and efforts to cooperate to achieve such liberalization through trade agreements. It concludes that there is increasing evidence that services liberalization is an important source of potential welfare gains, but relatively little research has been done that can inform the design of international cooperation-both trade agreements and development assistance-so as to more effectively promote development objectives.