Do the services commitments that countries have made in their post-Uruguay Round regional trade agreements (RTAs) indicate the types of concessions that they would be willing to multilateralise in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)? While there are important legal and economic...

The number of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have increased markedly over the last decade, with many addressing market openness and rule-making for services trade. Recent RTAs are breaking down existing barriers: on average, removing between 10% and 40% of services restrictions present in the...

This report analyzes the specific factors that affect the competitiveness of developing countries in global value chains (GVCs), and how these factors differ across four major economic sectors: agriculture, extractive industries, manufacturing and offshore services. Although integration into...

The contribution of services in the United Kingdom (UK) to exports, value added, and employment is one of the highest amongst OECD countries. UK employment also depends strongly on exports of digital services: in 2019 the jobs of around 3.2 million domestic workers in digital services sectors...

This paper presents the scoring and weighting methodology for calculation of the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for 18 sectors. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign...

Recent years have witnessed an ever-increasing resort to export restrictions in the markets for raw materials, causing heightened uncertainty about supply availability together with friction among trading partners. Poor transparency can amplify and compound the effects of restrictive trade...

The incidence of export taxes, prohibitions and other measures that raise export prices, limit export quantities or place conditions on exporting is on the rise. Transparency can help mitigate the negative effects of export restrictions by enabling affected stakeholders to better understand and...

This paper provides an in-depth examination of the trade effects of three regional trade agreements (RTAs) – the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR) -- in the agricultural sector. Results...

This report shows how more open markets in goods and services can contribute to creating jobs and increase incomes. Reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers can help in the short run where the economic crisis has led to significant involuntary unemployment by reducing costs of imported products...

Services play a more important role in trade and employment in the United Kingdom than in most other OECD countries. The UK services sector is supported by an open and transparent trade regime, policies that support competition and innovation, and regulatory transparency that facilitates the...