This study has two components: identification of concrete examples of services exports by developing countries, and quantitative studies on the gains from services liberalisation. While the study is by no means comprehensive, and is subject to many limitations, two fundamental findings emerge....

This report emphasizes high-income countries’ responsibility to lead by example in pursuing more open markets and in supporting the Least Developed Countries to raise their export competitiveness. It proposes concrete and practical steps that governments and international agencies can...

This report emphasizes high-income countries’ responsibility to lead by example in pursuing more open markets and in supporting the Least Developed Countries to raise their export competitiveness. It proposes concrete and practical steps that governments and international agencies can...

Trade is measured on a gross sales basis while GDP is measured on a net sales basis, i.e. value added. The rapid internationalisation of production in the last two decades has meant that gross trade flows are increasingly unrepresentative of the value-added flows. This fact has important...

Two otherwise identical firms that enter the same market in different months, one in January and one in December, will report dramatically different annual sales for the first calendar year of operations. This partial year effect in annual data leads to downward biased observations of the level...

The Service Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic (STDC) Toolkit is part of a larger agenda of trade competitiveness work developed by the World Bank’s International Trade Unit in recent years. Services are a key input in countries’ trade competitiveness, as well as a new source of trade...