The aim of this paper is to analyse developing countries' participation so far in the current round of services negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda. The paper analyses developing countries' negotiating positions, as evidenced by their multilateral negotiating proposals; their initial...

This paper attempts to fill a gap in the trade literature by providing a comprehensive overview of services liberalization commitments in the new generation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) as compared to prevailing GATS commitments and Doha Round offers. By developing a new database, the...

The Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO recognizes the need for positive efforts designed to ensure that developing countries and especially the least developed among them secure a share in the growth in international trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development.This...

This paper considers the asymmetric effect of Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) policies on heterogeneous exporters, based on matching a detailed panel of French firm exports to a new database of Trade Facilita- tion Indicators (TFIs) released recently by the Organisation for Economic...

Better information on how services policies vary across economies and sectors over time would improve the empirical analysis of their impact. This paper describes the Services Trade Policy Database (STPD), a joint initiative by the World Bank and the WTO Secretariat, which builds on a database...

A country or firm's position in the value chain will largely depend on its comparative advantage, and therefore the mix of skills and resource endowments it brings to international production. For some, this might initially involve specialising in the labour intensive segments while others may...

This paper highlights the large contribution of services to the Brazilian economy and the under-exploited potential of services to sustain productivity gains and international competitiveness. The areas with the largest potential for regulatory reform include improvements in the general business...

This report explores the relationship between services trade policies and mark-ups at the firm level, taken as a measure of competitive pressure. Restrictive regulations are found to enable firms to charge higher mark-ups in a majority of services sectors, suggesting ample scope for...

This paper presents the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for transport and courier services. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign services providers. The indices are...

This paper presents the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for financial services. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign services providers. The indices are calculated for 40...