Harms, Mattoo, and Schuknecht examine the determinants of market access commitments in international financial services trade in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Based on a theoretical model, they investigate empirically the role of domestic political economy forces,...

Financial services negotiations through the World Trade Organization have helped many developing and transition economies develop more stable and transparent policy regimes, and their commitments in no way compromise their ability to pursue sound macroeconomic and regulatory policies. But the...

This paper focuses on the sluggish growth of world trade relative to income growth in recent years. We use a simple empirical strategy based on an error correction model to assess whether the global trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. An estimate of the relationship between trade and...

There is limited trade in health services despite big differences in the price of health care across countries. Whether patients travel abroad for health care depends on the coverage of treatments by their health insurance plan. Under existing health insurance contracts, the gains from trade are...

This paper elaborates on a number of key principles that need to underpin a coherent and development-friendly architecture for the WTO. The key principles include enlarging the scope of WTO bargaining to include labor flows as well as capital flows; creating a structure that would provide a...

This paper estimates the effect of China's exchange rate changes on exports of developing countries in third markets. The degree of competition between China and its developing country competitors in specific products and destinations plays a key role in the identification strategy. The strategy...

Liberalization of trade and investment in services through trade agreements has progressed less than trade in goods. We review the limited progress achieved to date in the WTO and major regional agreements on services and possible explanations why trade agreements have not been more effective at...

This major work consists of carefully commissioned original and incisive contributions from leading scholars in the field of international economic law. Covering a full range of topics, the Handbook provides an accessible treatment of the law in each area, as well as a thoughtful synthesis and...

Little progress has been made since the creation of the WTO in expanding and deepening the coverage of services liberalization commitments. This paper identifies and discusses five hypotheses that may explain the absence of dynamism: (i) technological changes allow ever more services to be...

World trade in services amounted to $2170 billion in 1997, of which 40 per cent was cross-border consumption. Though service trade liberalization is hard to model, sectoral and general equilibrium analyses indicate the scope for major welfare gains. Reforms in services will be driven by domestic...