Philippa Dee

Multilateral liberalisation of services trade

This paper compares estimates of the gains from eliminating barriers to trade in services with those from eliminating post-Uruguay barriers remaining in the traditional areas of agriculture and manufacturing. It uses a model that incorporates a bilateral treatment of foreign direct investment, one of the key vehicles by which services are traded internationally.The model is a version of GTAP with foreign direct investment, known as FTAP.

Measuring the Cost of Barriers to Trade in Services

The past few decades have witnessed a growth in the importance of services in the economy, yet until the 1980s, scholarly literature on the expanding role of trade in services in the world economy remained scarce. This timely two-volume collection, edited by a leading analyst in the field, brings together seminal works on the WTO and trade in services published in the last twenty-five years. Areas covered in this important set include the determinants and patterns of trade in services, services in regional integration agreements and the GATS. This book will be of immense value to scholars and practitioners interested in this evolving and increasingly relevant field of study.To what extent can the traditional tools of trade policy analysis be used to analyse the economic costs of barriers to trade in services? Traditional analysis of trade barriers has focused primarily on the effects of tariffs. These are discriminatory taxes levied on foreign-produced goods at the border of a country. The Heckscher-Ohlin (HO) framework is a standard framework in which tariffs have been analyzed (Heckscher [1919] 1949; Ohlin 1933). This frame-work assumes perfect substitutability between domestically produced and foreign goods of the same type, fixed endowments of primary factors of production, and perfect mobility of those factors between sectors within an economy. The framework has been extended to consider more than two goods and factors (Jones and Scheinkman 1977), the presence of a sector-specific factor of production (Mayer 1974; Mussa 1974), imperfect competition (Markusen 1981), increasing returns to scale (Melvin 1969) and product differentiation (Krugman 1979; Helpman 1981). However, barriers to trade in services are unlike tariffs. They are typically regulatory barriers, rather than explicit taxes. They need not discriminate against foreigners. Indeed, barriers to market access are often designed to protect incumbent firms from any new entry, be it by domestic or foreign firms. And barriers to services trade are not restricted to affecting the output of services firms. One particularly important category of barriers to services trade—restrictions on foreign direct investment by service firms—affects the use of primary factors. These restrictions are recognized in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) under the World Trade Organization (WTO), since this agreement recognizes commercial presence as one of the modes by which services are traded.

Trade Facilitation: What, Why, How, Where and When?

Analysis of infrastructure’s role in facilitating international trade and consequently regional economic integration is still rudimentary. This original book fills that knowledge gap by exploring relevant concepts, measurement issues, aspects of the implementation of trade-related infrastructure facilities and their impacts on poverty, trade, investment and macroeconomic balances.

Services in PTAs - donuts or holes?

Presenting a blend of economics and law, this book provides unique insights as well as practical guidance for negotiators considering major issues on the agendas of bilateral and regional preferential trading agreements (PTAs).

The economy-wide effects of further trade reforms in Tunisia's services sectors

The purpose of this paper is to benchmark Tunisia against other emerging economies in terms of the regulatory barriers affecting particular services sectors, and to assess the economy-wide effects of further liberalizing these services trade restrictions, compared with reducing the dispersion in barriers to its merchandise trade. On the basis of a rather restricted sample of services sectors, partial regulatory reform would yield gains roughly equivalent to full unilateral reform of manufacturing tariffs, but roughly one-tenth the gains from full bilateral reform of border protection in agriculture with the European Union. The adjustment costs associated with these services trade reforms would be minimal. The paper identifies the reasons why the gains from these services reforms are relatively small, and argues that a wider set of reforms could provide win-win outcomes and even fewer adjustment costs. By contrast, the gains in agriculture and manufacturing tend to come at the expense of domestic output in the reforming sectors -- the gains are greater, but so too are the adjustment costs.

Integrating Services Markets

Few papers have examined trade in services in developing countries, and there are none on trade in services in South Asian countries and their relationship with other Asian countries. This paper aims to fill this gap. We find that (i) trade and investment flows in services among economies in South and East Asia are not yet widespread but that they could be greater, (ii) impediments to trade and investment can be identified, and (iii) reform agendas in both regions will contribute to their integration.

Tunisia's global integration : a second generation of reforms to boost growth and employment

This study on a world integration for Tunisia attempts to contribute to the achievement of the growth of the 11th development plan. It first takes stock of past integration policies, outlining policies implemented and assessing their impact on foreign direct investments (FDI), exports and employment. Then, it examines the current challenges of integration of Tunisia, which is both global and multisectoral pursuant to the actual creation of a free trade area with Europe for industrial products in January 2008. In the light of challenges expected, another generation of integration reform is identified to further improve the positioning of a competitive Tunisia and realize the potential growth in services. The report contains four chapters. Chapter one analyzes integration policies implemented since the early 70s and evaluates the impact thereof on the FDI, exports and employment. Chapter two examines the current challenges and major reforms necessary to correct the side-effects of past integration policies. Chapter three attempts to identify the reforms necessary to improve quality and lower prices of services. Finally, chapter four examines the prospects for export of professional services (accounting, auditing, legal services) and health by Tunisia, which showed a real capacity to compete in these areas in recent years.

The economic effects of PTAs

This paper gives a short history of the development of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), followed by a summary of the economics of PTAs. The paper then examines the typical coverage of recent PTAs, and assesses their likely economic effects. Political economy considerations mean that PTAs have tended to be selective in two important ways—they have tended to be preferential, even in the provisions that go beyond goods trade, and they have tended to target only those provisions that explicitly discriminate against foreigners. This selectivity means that PTAs are an inferior path to deeper economic integration. For most of the Asian region, comprehensive domestic regulatory reform dominates as an integration strategy, while PTAs deliver relatively trivial gains. Multilateral action is an intermediate strategy, and is important for delivering trade liberalisation in sensitive sectors or in highly protected economies. These results appear to be relatively robust to the size of the PTA grouping.

Promoting Domestic Reforms Through Regionalism

There is a strong presumption among economists that domestic reforms are promoted by regionalism. Yet strong empirical evidence for this proposition is lacking. This paper examines both the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on this issue, drawing on the relevant economic, political, and legal literature. The authors argue that in general, the case for reciprocity in domestic reforms is weak. In the one case where a regional agreement appears to have promoted domestic reform—the European Union (EU)—the enforcement mechanisms used by the European Court of Justice played a significant role. But those mechanisms are not unique. Instead, the authors argue that the EU’s success was because domestic constituents were empowered to take action against uncompetitive regulation. Thus the EU promoted economic reform in sensitive, behind-the-border areas because it overcame the problem of loss of sovereignty by internalizing the political battle to domestic interests, and yet still provided a non-political frame of reference for the debate.

Impact of Regulatory Barriers to Trade in Insurance Services

This book presents a state-of-the-art evaluation of the benefits and costs of behind-the-border services reform. It introduces new, second-generation methods for quantifying regulatory barriers and applies those methods to a wide range of services sectors ia financial, infrastructure and social ia in a broad spectrum of countries. It uses advanced modeling techniques to project the sectoral, economy-wide and regional effects of services reforms, as well as highlight their adjustment costs. The empirical results offer fresh guidance to policy-makers, who need better information bases with which to prioritize services reforms and devise pathways to achieving them. The empirical methods provide invaluable tools to academics, researchers and policy advisors, who can use them to further improve those information bases. Priorities and Pathways in Services Reform: Part I ia Quantitative Studies presents new methodological frameworks for assessing and prioritizing services reforms, and provides an up-to-date evaluation of the policy impacts across a range of services markets and countries. Part II ia Political Economy furthers the conversation by analyzing what it takes for a reform to succeed. You may also be interested in Priorities and Pathways in Services Reform: Part II ia Political Economy Studies Contents: Measuring and Modelling Regulatory Restrictions in Services (Philippa Dee) Impact of Regulatory Barriers to Trade in Insurance Services (Philippa Dee and Huong Dinh) Impact of Regulatory Barriers to Trade in Banking Services (Huong Dinh) Regulatory Restrictions in Logistics Services (Claire Hollweg and Marn-Heong Wong) Impact of Air and Maritime Restrictions on International Transport Margins (Patricia Sourdin) Restructuring and Productivity in Rail Transport (Pedro Cantos, Jos¨¦ M Pastor and Lorenzo Serrano) Sectoral Impacts of Reforms in Electricity and Gas Markets (Philippa Dee) Impact of Trade Barriers on the Productivity of Higher Education Institutions (Philippa Dee) Barriers to Trade in Healthcare Services in ASEAN Countries (Philippa Dee) Assessing Services Reform (Philippa Dee) Readership: Applied economics, graduate students, researchers and policy advisors in the areas of structural reform and economic integration. Key Features: It presents state-of-the-art techniques for assessing behind-the-border services reform It brings a number of applications to various services sectors and countries together in one place (for the first time in a long while) It gives fresh insights into priorities for services reform, and how to assess them