We study the effect of services trade restrictiveness on manufacturing productivity for a broad cross-section of countries at different stages of economic development. Decreasing services trade restrictiveness has a positive indirect impact on the manufacturing sectors that use services as...

Many agreements to liberalize trade in services tend to be limited in scope. Concerns about possible negative regulatory consequences of services liberalization is one reason for this. In this paper we provide quantitative estimates of the impact of governance quality on the magnitude of the...

This paper investigates the relationship between the quality of regulatory policies governing public procurement and participation in public tenders by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Using a large dataset on European procurement contracts, we find that countries with better quality...

At the 9th Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Bali it was agreed to develop a work program to conclude the long-running Doha round. This report argues that any work program should recognize that goods and services are increasingly produced in international supply chains. Many of the policies...

Services are regulated for a variety of reasons. Regulation is typically influenced by political economy forces and may thus at times reflect protectionist motivations. Similar considerations arise for goods, but the potential for protectionist capture may be greater in services as many sectors...

This paper exploits a firm-level dataset for nineteen Sub-Sharan African countries that provides information on the share of total sales to government entities to provide new insights into the relative importance of participation in public procurement activity for different types of firms. We...

This paper provides the first quantitative evidence on the restrictiveness of services policies in 2016 for a sample of developing countries, based on recently released regulatory data collected by the World Bank and WTO. We use machine learning to recreate to a high degree of accuracy the...

The deadlock in the WTO Doha Round has been accompanied by an increased focus on the negotiation of preferential trade agreements, including so-called ‘mega-regionals'. This paper discusses possible implications for — and possible responses by — excluded countries that have little...

Existing research generally finds weak positive effects of aid for trade (AfT) on aggregate merchandise trade of recipients once endogeneity in the AfT-trade relationship is accounted for. In this paper, we confirm weak findings for both aggregate merchandise and services trade of recipients,...

Can a WTO Member discriminate against foreign suppliers of services located in jurisdictions that refuse to share information with a government to permit it to determine if its nationals engage in tax evasion? Does it matter if the Member uses standards developed by an international body as the...