文档介绍：Trade in Services

Philippa Dee
mission
PO Box 80
Belconnen ACT 2616
Australia
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Paper prepared for conference on Impacts of Trade Liberalisation Agreements on
Latin America and the Caribbean, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington
DC, 5-6 November 2001.
The views expressed in this paper are those of the staff involved and do not
necessarily reflect those of the mission.
ERRO TRADE IN SERVICES
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AUTO
1 Why worry?
Why should trade theorists and trade policy practitioners worry about services?
First, 60 per cent of the world’s GDP is earned there (World Bank 2001). This is not
just a rich country phenomenon — 119 of the 132 countries listed in the World
Development Report have a services share of GDP that exceeds their industry share.
And 81 have a services share of GDP that exceeds 50 per cent — from Bangladesh
and Botswana to Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Second, close to a third of world trade is generated there (Karsenty 2000). It is no
longer tenable, if it ever was, to regard services as non-traded. Nor is it correct to
say that most services trade is mercial presence and hence parable
to merchandise trade. Karsenty shows that on the basis of available statistics,
‘traditional’ trade in services — defined to measure cross-border transactions — is
today larger in absolute size than establishment-related trade in services. And some
of the economies most dependent (in relative terms) on services trade are also some
of the poorest (eg Armenia, Lesotho and Kiribati).
Third, barriers to services trade are significant. Because they are primarily
regulatory, and differ substantially from traditional tariffs or quotas, there is no
simple ‘tariff equivalent’ with which pare to merchandise trade barriers. But
the effects of removing them can be substantial. For example, Dee and Hanslow
(2001) suggest that the global gains from eliminating barriers to trade in services,