Despite the importance of services trade and “servicification” of economic activity, “Mode 4” accounted for only 2.9% of total services trade in 2017. While existing literature has estimated services trade costs, effects of barriers to Mode 4 trade have not yet been quantified. We...

Existing literature focuses on the effect of sanctions on merchandise trade and investment, neglecting the services trade dimension. We contribute by using the recent Global Sanctions Database (Felbermayr et al. 2020a,b) to examine the impact of sanctions on bilateral services trade in a...

The last century has witnessed dramatic changes in the world economy. The service (tertiary) sector, which at the beginning of the 20th century was of little importance relative to agriculture and manufacturing, has become the dominant sector today, accounting for 80% and more of value added in...

By reducing the costs of such trade services as transport, insurance, and finance, liberalizing trade in services can generate benefits in the markets for every kind of trade they facilitate. It can also stimulate the fragmentation of production of both goods and services, thus increasing...

This study explores the effect of parallel imports (PIs) when the producer may discriminate repair and maintenance services against PI units. This service discrimination weakens intrabrand competition and reduces the degree of price convergence between countries. If the producer makes costly...

In Philippines - Distilled Spirits, the Appellate Body of the WTO reaffirmed that the determination of 'likeness' in the GATT should be about the competitive relationship between products. A coherent methodology for the determination of 'likeness' has finally begun to emerge, with the same...

This paper studies the potential long-term effects of three illustrative scenarios using a multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) trade model calibrated to 165 countries. The first scenario estimates effects from potential U.S. auto tariffs. The second analyzes a ‘transactional...

The basic principles of a free society are timeless, but they need to be relearned every generation. One of those principles is the freedom for people to trade freely with one another — both within nations and across borders. The case in favor of free trade has been uncontroversial among...

Inclusivity is perhaps the single most important human need to facilitate and demonstrate fairness for all members in an open and free society. When this principle need is compromised by appearances of unscrupulous self-interested privileged elites to perpetuate a systemic widening disparity...

This paper examines the effect of international trade on corporate market power in emerging market economies and developing countries, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis is based on a large firm-level dataset, tariff data by sector and aggregate indicators of international...