Ample anecdotal evidence over the last couple of years points to Romania’s growing attractiveness as location for offshoring decisions by Western companies, and the subsequent rise in offshoring-related services activities. This paper aims to explore if and to what extent these relatively new...

This paper investigates Central America's external linkages over the last fifteen years of increased integration in light of the 2008-09 global recession. Using structural VAR models, it is found that a one percent shock to U.S. growth shifts economic activity in Central America by 0.7 to 1...

The paper argues that measuring revealed comparative advantages (RCA) in international trade in services cannot be straightforwardly compared to RCA in trade in goods. The essential difference is that services are internationally exchanged not only by cross-border trade mainly subject to...

International posting of workers and mobility of self-employed service suppliers lie between outright migration and trade in goods: their regulation, for both distributional and marketcorrecting purposes, is not as difficult to harmonize as that of labour markets, but personal mobility is more...

Air transportation is a major facilitator of international trade in terms of the value of goods and services involved, and is important to specific industries, such as tourism, that are being developed by many lower income countries. High air transportation costs can pose a major impediment to...

Tourism flows are usually explained through demand-side factors such as income growth in developed economies and changes in the preferences of visitors. While these models are adequate for short-term forecasts, little theoretical justification is provided to explain why certain countries perform...

As the impact of trade in services on the current global financial crisis appears to overtake that of trade in goods, we propose to examine liberalization of trade in services through regional trade agreements (RTAs). The regional liberalization of trade in services is expected to generate...

Trade in services is a rapidly growing phenomenon. Consequently, the question of individual countries? competitiveness in trade in services is of increasing importance. In this paper we describe patterns of competitiveness in services sectors for EU members over the period 1995 to 2005,...

We estimate the potential for trade in services in a 2-step approach using a gravity model for a sample of bilateral service trade flows in individual service categories between 65 countries over the period 2000 to 2005. In particular, we focus on the Austrian economy's potential for untapped...

This paper uses VAR models to examine the magnitude and sources of growth spillovers to the Baltics from key trading partners, as well asfrom the real effective exchange rate (REER). Our results show there are significant cross-country spillovers to the Baltics with those from the EU outweighing...