The dynamism of air traffic markets in the Middle East obscures the persistence of restrictions on international competition. But how important are such restrictions for passenger traffic? This paper uses detailed data on worldwide passenger aviation to estimate the effect of air transport...

A new cross-country database on services policy reveals a perverse pattern: many landlocked countries restrict trade in the very services that connect them with the rest of the world. On average, telecommunications and air-transport policies are significantly more restrictive in landlocked...

The growth of India's manufacturing sector since 1991 has been attributed mostly to trade liberalization and more permissive industrial licensing. This paper demonstrates the significant impact of a neglected factor: India's policy reforms in services. The authors examine the link between those...

The focus of trade policy has shifted in recent years from economy-wide reductions in tariffs and trade restrictions toward targeted interventions to facilitate trade and promote exports. Most of these latter interventions are based on the new mantra of"aid-for-trade"rather than on hard evidence...

Much attention has focused on the impact of the current crisis on goods trade; hardly any on its impact on services trade. Using new trade data from the United States, and more aggregate data from other OECD countries, the authors show that services trade is weathering the current crisis much...

Using panel data for the fourteen major states of India over the 1980-2000 period, the authors estimate the effect of human capital endowment on the performance of the state economies. They find that greater availability of skilled workers had a positive and significant impact on output in the...

The competitiveness of firms in open economies is increasingly determined by access to low-cost and high-quality producer services - telecommunications, transport and distribution services, financial intermediation, etc. This paper discusses the role of services in economic growth, focusing in...

The demand for accountability in aid-for-trade is increasing but monitoring has focused on case studies and impressionistic narratives. The paper reviews recent evidence from a wide range of studies, recognizing that a multiplicity of approaches is needed to learn what works and what does not....

This paper examines how policy governing the liner shipping sector affects maritime transport costs and seaborne trade flows. The paper uses a novel data set and finds that restrictions, particularly on foreign investment, increase maritime transport costs, strongly but unevenly. The...

A new Services Trade Restrictions Database collects and makes publicly available information on services trade policy assembled in a comparable manner across 103 countries, five sectors (telecommunications, finance, transportation, retail and professional services) and the key modes of service...