The conclusion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) constitutes a priority and key component of the external trade policy of the European Union (EU). It is also an immediate follow-up to several years of regulatory cooperation between the two global trade powers. In an...

Services have long been perceived as playing a secondary role in world trade. In particular, the role of services trade policies and multilateral services commitments often tends to be downplayed. However, in value added terms, services account for about 50% of world trade and are significant in...

There has been virtually no liberalization under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to date. Most existing commitments are confined to guaranteeing the levels of access that existed in the mid-1990s, when the Agreement entered into force, in a limited number of sectors. The only...

The number of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have increased markedly over the last decade, with many addressing market openness and rule-making for services trade. Recent RTAs are breaking down existing barriers: on average, removing between 10% and 40% of services restrictions present in the...

Are market access commitments on services in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) reciprocal or simply unilateral? If reciprocal, do concessions granted in services depend on concessions received from the trading partner in other services or in non-services areas as well? In this paper we...

This paper presents indices of regulatory heterogeneity based on the rich information in the STRI regulatory database. The indices are built from assessing – for each country pair and each measure – whether or not the countries have the same regulation. For each country pair and each sector,...

This paper examines how services trade and policies contribute to connectivity. It highlights the economic relevance of services and identifies some key channels through which trade in services contributes to physical and digital connectivity. The paper examines the impact of services trade...

To date, government procurement has been effectively carved out of the main multilateral rules of the WTO system. This paper examines the systemic and other ramifications of this exclusion, from both an economic and a legal point of view. In addition to relevant elements of the WTO Agreements,...

There has been virtually no liberalization under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to date. Most existing commitments are confined to guaranteeing the levels of access that existed in the mid-1990s, when the Agreement entered into force, in a limited number of sectors. The only...

Services is an inextricable component of any modern economy. There is strong evidence that the more economies shift towards the production of services, the higher are the positive spillovers to these economies as a whole. Services have contributed greatly to the economic development of many...