This report casts light on the impact of regulatory restrictions on the movement of people across international borders on services trade costs. Such restrictions were implemented on health and safety grounds following the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020. The analysis relies on several...

This paper presents new estimates of policy-induced trade costs in five services sectors for 46 countries. Results demonstrate the significant untapped economic potential of multilateral, plurilateral, and unilateral services trade liberalisation. Even though services trade has more than tripled...

The challenge of achieving net zero CO2 emissions will require a significant scaling up of production and international trade of several raw materials which are critical for transforming the global economy from one dominated by fossil fuels to one led by renewable energy technologies. This...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in generating economic activity and employment in developing and developed countries. However, partly due to remaining at-the-border trade costs, SMEs continue to be less represented in international trade – as direct exporters...

This paper provides a broad overview of some of the issues that digital trade raises for ASEAN countries and its MSMEs, including new opportunities that digitalisation presents for ASEAN firms to increase trade. However, it shows that adoption of relatively simple digital tools, such as...

Although global value chain (GVCs) participation in Southeast Asia has been growing, little is known about whether the benefits from participation are accruing to larger firms or if small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up the majority of companies and employ the bulk of the...

Digital transformation has enabled easier tradability of traditional services across borders and the emergence of new services that create value from data. But the benefits derived from digitalisation risk being derailed by existing and emerging trade barriers. The OECD Digital Services Trade...

This paper highlights India’s unique services export led growth path. Observing that Indian business services have helped manufacturers all over the world to become more efficient and productive, it raises the question how Indian business services can do the same for local manufacturers and...

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...

A number of countries used discriminatory government procurement policies as part of stimulus packages designed to alleviate the effects of the global economic crisis. This paper collates and updates the evidence related to the size of procurement markets, the level of home bias they exhibit,...