International barriers to services trade are deeply intertwined with national regulatory, investment, and immigration policies. Accordingly, the liberalization of trade in services is considerably more complex that the liberalization of trade in goods. Sector-specific issues abound. This book...

Based on a novel approach to measuring the cost of trade in services for Modes 1 (cross-border supply), 2 (consumption abroad), and 4 (temporary movement of service suppliers), developed by the World Trade Organization Secretariat, this paper reviews available evidence on factors affecting trade...

The growing importance of services trade for countries across the world is well-documented in the services and trade literatures. At the same time, regulatory and administrative barriers to the movement of service suppliers to deliver services internationally have resulted in very low shares of...

World Trade Organization (WTO) accession is a challenging process typically commanding a heavy price in terms of resources and time expended while also calling for the expense of non-trivial political capital by an acceding country's policymakers. Nevertheless, gaining membership of the world...

This paper presents new high-frequency data on trade policy changes targeting medical and food products since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, documenting how countries used trade policy instruments in response to the health crisis on a week-by-week basis. The data set reveals a rapid...