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...

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...

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...

Since the mid 1980s a substantial amount of research has been undertaken on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the World Trade Organization or regional trade agreements, especially the European Union, but an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of services sector...

In the past 30 years, China has achieved phenomenal economic growth, an unprecedented development"miracle"in human history. How did China achieve this rapid growth? What have been its key drivers? And, most important, what can be learned from China's success? Policy makers, business people, and...

In this paper the authors use a computable general equilibrium model of the Kazakhstan economy to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which encompasses (1) improved market access; (2) Kazakhstan tariff reduction; (3) reduction of barriers against entry by...

Discussions of competition and regulatory reform typically focus on price and quantity effects. But improving certain infrastructure services can also stimulate entry, and competition in user industries downstream, allowing new firms to enter, incumbent users to offer new products, and rivalry...

Bringing management of the radio spectrum closer to markets is long overdue. The radio spectrum is a major component of the infrastructure that underpins the information society. Spectrum management, however, has not kept up with major changes in technology, business practice, and economic...

Recipient government responses to development project aid have typically been studied at high levels of aggregation, using cross-country comparisons and/or aggregate time series data. Yet increasingly the relevant decisions are being made at the local level, in response to specific...

With the emergence of a powerful trucking industry and the deregulation of transport, most of the once-powerful developing country railways are facing a struggle for survival. Traditional traffic is shifting to trucking and pipelines, governments are increasingly reluctant to write blank checks...