"The authors analyze the extent to which the EU-15 and 16 transition economies used the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to commit to service sector policy reforms. They compare GATS commitments with the evolution of actual policy stances over time. While there is substantial...

This report provides new evidence on the role of services in global value chains (GVCs). With the release of the Trade in Value Added database, it was highlighted that services account for a larger share of world trade than suggested by traditional statistics. But this evidence does not tell the...

Within global value chains (GVCs), services and manufacturing activities are intertwined. This report further investigates the role played by services in GVCs by looking at patterns of specialisation in 23 services industries over the period 2000-2014. Relying on the concept of revealed...

The water in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) refers to the difference between the bound level of trade restrictiveness permitted by the GATS and the actual trade regime. Using the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI), this report provides estimates of the water in...

This study empirically investigates key restrictions to the internationalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing and across different types of services. The study explores the extent to which binding constraints faced by SMEs producing goods may differ from small...