Date: 2019
Type: Working Paper
Services trade policies and economic integration : new evidence for developing countries
Working Paper, EUI RSCAS, 2019/57, Global Governance Programme-354, [Global Economics]
HOEKMAN, Bernard M., SHEPHERD, Ben, Services trade policies and economic integration : new evidence for developing countries, EUI RSCAS, 2019/57, Global Governance Programme-354, [Global Economics] - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/65611
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This paper provides the first quantitative evidence on the restrictiveness of services policies in 2016 for a sample of developing countries, based on recently released regulatory data collected by the World Bank and WTO. We use machine learning to recreate to a high degree of accuracy the OECD’s Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI), which takes account of nonlinearities and dependencies across measures. We use the resulting estimates to extend the OECD STRI approach to 23 additional countries, producing what we term a Services Policy Index (SPI). Converting the SPI to ad valorem equivalent terms shows that services policies are typically much more restrictive than tariffs on imports of goods, in particular in professional services and telecommunications. Developing countries tend to have higher services trade restrictions, but less so than has been found in research using data for the late 2000s. We show that the SPI has strong explanatory power for bilateral trade in services at the sectoral level, as well as for aggregate goods and services trade.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/65611
ISSN: 1028-3625
Series/Number: EUI RSCAS; 2019/57; Global Governance Programme-354; [Global Economics]
Publisher: European University Institute
Keyword(s): International trade Trade in services Machine learning Services policy Trade restrictiveness indicators F13 F15 O24
Other topic(s): Transnationalism Trade, investment and international cooperation