The European Commission's 2004 proposals for a Services Directive consists of measures to reduce or eliminate the obstacles of cross-border trade of services by introducing the 'country of origin' principle. It implies that regulation of the country of origin is relevant, and that the country of...

Intra-European trade in services is hampered by national regulatory differences for service markets. The European Commission has proposed a new directive to overcome these regulatory barriers. This document assesses the effects of this new directive on trade and investment in services. Read...

Political economy theories of international trade predict the convergence of trade policy preferences between small and large exporting enterprises within a sector. However, this convergence does not generally occur in service trade, which restricts the way a service provider is allowed to...

The paper sketches the basic patterns and facts about service trade, foreign direct investment and regulation in the EU. We conclude that the last decade trade in services has increased substantially, in particular in business services. This is also the case for foreign direct investment (in...

One of the achievements of the of the European Union (EU) is the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour between the member states. The internal market for goods seems to function well, after the implementation of the Single Market programme in 1988. That is however not the case for...

While the single market has largely been achieved for the EU market for goods, the services sector has lagged behind. This has resulted in sluggish activity, low productivity growth, high prices, that show a wide dispersion and relatively high inflation in this sector. Both the OECD product...

While the single market has largely been achieved for the EU market for goods, the services sector has lagged behind. This has resulted in sluggish activity, low productivity growth, high prices, that show a wide dispersion and relatively high inflation in this sector. Both the OECD product...

This report examines services schedules of commitments in 56 regional trade agreements (RTAs) where an OECD country is a party. The preferential content of RTAs is assessed through an analysis of market access and national treatment commitments at the level of the 155 sub-sectors of the General...

This paper takes stock of the forces that lie behind the recent rise of preferential agreements in services trade. Its initial focus is with a number of distinguishing features of services trade that sets it apart from trade in goods and shapes trade liberalization and rule-making approaches in...

This paper analyzes whether and to what extent determinants of comparative advantage have explanatory power for conventional services trade. It assesses the geographical, Heckscher-Ohlin and institutional determinants of services trade based on the literature for goods trade. Moreover, this...