Does integration of services differ from integration of goods?

The theory of economic integration has been well developed over time but mainly with regard to goods. Conceptually integration for services needs to be differentiated from goods according to the characteristics of services and the nature of barriers to integration. The need for personal interaction between supplier and user gives rise to different ways in which services are traded from goods with suppliers and users crossing borders and a different balance between cross-border trade and permanent presence. Obstacles to trade take place behind rather than at the border. The European Union has been chosen as an example of integration for services both on the basis of past experience and because of its ability to remove obstacles for services using specific institutional powers. Existing levels of integration for goods and services are compared with those to be expected on the basis of theory. Market integration for manufactured goods is lower than previously estimated and services higher, although services remain considerably less integrated. Finally, explanations for differing levels of integration both compared to goods and those expected among different services are sought in terms of the barriers to cross-border trade and permanent presence in the form of regulation, market structures and cultural factors.     

International trade in services: A portrait of importers and exporters

We provide a novel set of stylized facts on firms engaging in international trade in services, using unique data on firm-level exports and imports from the world's second largest services exporter, the United Kingdom (UK). We show that only a fraction of UK firms engage in international trade in services, that trade participation varies widely across industries and that service traders are different from non-traders in terms of size, productivity and other firm characteristics. We also provide detailed evidence on the trading patterns of service exporters and importers, such as the number of markets served, the value of exports and imports per market and the share of individual markets in overall sales. We interpret these facts in the light of existing theories of international trade in services and goods. Our results demonstrate that firm-level heterogeneity is a key feature of services trade. Also, we find many similarities between services and goods trade at the firm level and conclude that existing heterogeneous firm models for goods trade will be a good starting point for explaining trade in services as well.     

The Impact of Services Trade Restrictiveness on Trade Flows

This paper uses recent OECD data on services trade restrictions (STRI) to analyse the relationship between services trade policies and cross‐border trade in services. A standard gravity model is enhanced by the STRI indices in a cross‐section regression analysis. Services trade restrictions are negatively associated with both imports and exports of services. The surprisingly strong effect on services exports is probably explained by a negative relationship between the STRIs and sector performance indicators. Consequently, services suppliers from less open countries are less competitive abroad. Bilateral differences in regulation are also found to curtail services trade over and above the impact of the trade liberalisation level. At the margin, regulatory differences have a larger effect on trade flows the lower the level of the STRI.     

Market Structure and Market Access

We explore an issue at the nexus of domestic competition policy and international trade, the interaction between goods trade and market power in domestic trade and distribution sectors. We examine the effect of variations in conditions of domestic competition in services on trade volumes in goods in the cases of both linear and nonlinear import demand, including standard form CES‐based gravity models of bilateral trade flows. Theory suggests a set of linkages between service‐sector pricing and goods trade supported by econometrics involving imports of 22 OECD countries vis‐a‐vis 69 exporters. Competition in distribution services affects the volume of trade in goods. Additionally, because of interaction between tariffs and pricing, the market structure of the domestic service sector becomes increasingly important as tariffs are reduced. Indeed, depending on the degree of competition, market access concessions on tariffs may be effectively undone in some cases by changes in margins. For exporters, we find that service competition in destination markets matters most for exporters from smaller, poorer countries. Our results also suggest that while negotiated agreements leading to cross‐border services liberalisation may boost goods trade as well, they may also lead to a fall in goods trade when such liberalisation involves FDI leading to increased service sector concentration.     

The Performance of Trading Firms in the Services Sectors – Comparable Evidence from Four EU Countries

We examine trade complexity and the implications of adding additional dimensions of trade for firm performance among services producers. We use unique firm‐level data to compare these patterns across four EU countries. Overall, services firms are relatively less engaged in trade than manufacturing firms; they mostly trade goods and are more likely to import than to export. Trade in services is quite rare; services are more likely to be traded by firms already trading goods. Trading firms in the services sectors are significantly larger, more productive and pay higher wages than non‐traders. Two‐way traders outperform one‐way traders. Changes in trading status by either adding another dimension of trade (imports, exports) or another type of product (goods, services) are infrequent and are associated with significant preswitching premia. In contrast, learning effects from switching trading status are uncommon. This points to significant fixed cost of being engaged in trade and confirms some previous findings that trading services firms have similar traits as their manufacturing counterparts. Apart from greater trade participation in smaller countries, we do not observe systematic differences in terms of trade or switching premia between the four countries that might be attributable to differences in country characteristics.     

Income Inequalities and International Trade in Goods and Services: Short- and Long-Run Evidence

In this article, we study the short- and long-run effects of trade openness in services on wage inequalities. The sample covers ten Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from 1980 to 2005. We find a differentiated impact of trade in goods compared to trade in services: while trade in goods has a short- and a long-run impact on inequalities, trade in services has only long-run effects. Moreover, we also find that international trade in services has a stronger impact on inequalities than international trade in goods, and this effect does not concern only inequalities between top incomes and low incomes but also between top incomes and median incomes.     

中国文化贸易结构和贸易竞争力分析

基于文化产品和服务进出口数据,对中国文化贸易结构、国际市场占有率、贸易竞争力指数、显示性比较优势指数的分析表明,尽管中国是文化产品出口第一大国,但文化贸易结构不合理,文化产业总体国际竞争力较弱且发展不平衡;中国文化贸易的竞争优势主要体现在手工艺品、设计、视觉艺术品和新媒体这些外围的文化产品中,具有核心内容的影视媒介、音乐媒介、出版物及版权、文化休闲娱乐服务等文化出口比重低、竞争力弱。     

Beyond Border Barriers: The Liberalisation of Services Trade in Tunisia and Egypt

Tunisia and Egypt have both recently undertaken significant steps toward trade reform. They have committed to a partnership agreement with the European Union. Both countries have also joined the WTO and are participating in Doha Round discussions on the liberalisation of non‐tariff barriers on both goods and services trade. These developments provide an interesting context within which to investigate not only the changes in welfare associated with reforms affecting the trade in goods, but also the impacts of services liberalisation. Using open‐economy computable general equilibrium models for both Tunisia and Egypt, this paper explores the reasons why structural differences in these two economies imply different opportunities and challenges with trade reform and services liberalisation. The gains from eliminating barriers at the border for goods trade are significantly greater for Tunisia than Egypt. Both countries, however, gain substantially from liberalisation of foreign direct investment in services. Furthermore, economic growth is more evenly distributed across sectors than with liberalisation of trade in goods alone. In addition to reporting on the impact of alternative policies on income, output, employment and trade, sector‐level effects are also considered.     

The effect of border barriers to services trade on goods trade

This paper has two objectives (a) to introduce border policy-induced barriers (PIBs) to services trade and (b) analyse the impact of border PIBs in services sectors on goods trade. The World Input-Output Database covering 43 countries is used over the period 2000–14. A three-stage analysis is employed. The measures of bilateral services trade barriers calculated in each services sector in the first stage are decomposed into its cultural/geographic and policy-induced parts in the second stage. Border PIBs to services trade are used in the structural gravity estimations of bilateral goods trade in the final stage. The results demonstrate significant and robust adverse effects of barriers to services trade on goods trade. When the level of development is taken into consideration, there are marked differences in the impact of these barriers on goods trade.     

Firm heterogeneity and international trade in services

This study, using panel data on Japanese firms, analyses the relationship between services trade and firm heterogeneity. It finds that the number of firms engaged in services trade is far less than that engaged in goods trade. Further, the productivity of services traders is higher than that of domestic firms and goods trading firms, whereas the productivity of firms that export services beyond the boundary of their firm groups is higher than that of those that export services only to their affiliate firms. These results suggest that only productive firms can engage in services trade by incurring the relatively large fixed costs.     

A league of their own: services exporters – a developing country perspective

This paper provides a firm-level portrait of services exporters along with goods exporters in a developing country. Current findings of firm-level services trade literature suggest that the stylized facts of goods trade apply to services trade as well for a set of developed countries. This paper investigates if similar results hold for a developing country, Turkey, for the period 2003–2008. Most results lend support to the evidence found in the previous literature. However, the analysis of Turkish data shows that firms that export both goods and services are larger than those exporting goods or services only while multinationals that sell only goods are bigger than multinationals exporting both goods and services or those exporting only services.     

The value of market access and national treatment commitments in services trade agreements

This paper looks at market access and national treatment commitments for services in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and in 95 regional trade agreements (RTAs) involving the countries that are covered in the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI). The objective is to quantify the impact of legal bindings on trade in services that result from a reduction in the uncertainty faced by exporters. Bilateral bindings indices are created for five broad service sectors (professional services, computer services, telecoms, financial services and transport services). They indicate how close the sector is from a fully bound regime with no possibility to introduce any new trade barrier, by comparing commitments with the actual trade regime. These bilateral indices are then tested over the period 2000–2014 in a structural gravity model. Despite differences across sectors, the results confirm that the legal bindings typically found in services trade agreements tend to have a positive impact on exports even if no actual liberalisation takes place.     

What is at Stake in the Doha Round?

In this study the key elements of the WTO Doha Round are simulated and the main implications for international trade and national income are analysed. Based on negotiation information, three scenarios are designed. All scenarios encompass goods, services and agricultural liberalisation as well as trade facilitation. For goods liberalisation, a so‐called Swiss formula is used to cut bound tariff rates. Agricultural tariffs are cut according to a tiered linear formula. Attention has been given to the modelling of trade facilitation. Indirect as well as direct trade transaction costs are modelled. For simulation of the services liberalisation quantitative estimates of indirect trade barriers are used. The simulation results show that all regions in the aggregation gain in the simulated Doha scenarios, with a particularly strong result for developing countries. A conservative estimate is that global income increases with 0.2–0.7 per cent of initial GDP, depending on the level of liberalisation. Trade facilitation contributes the most to these results, with increased market access for non‐agricultural goods coming in second place. Overall, simulations indicate the importance of countries’ own liberalisation for their national income gains, and the importance of a broad‐based round.     

The crisis-resilience of services trade

Much attention has been focused on the impact of the current crisis on goods trade; hardly any on its impact on services trade. Using new trade data from the USA, and more aggregate data from other OECD countries, the authors show that services trade is weathering the current crisis much better than goods trade. On the basis of new evidence from Indian services exporters, it is suggested that services trade is more robust relative to goods trade for three reasons: less cyclical demand; lesser dependence on external finance; and few explicitly protectionist measures so far taken in services.     

货物贸易、服务贸易与技术贸易发展趋向

通过对世界货物贸易、世界服务贸易和国际技术贸易这三者的发展状况进行对比分析,考察三者在贸易自由化方面的关系,认为技术贸易自由化的阻力是技术贸易、服务贸易和货物贸易中最小的,且发展最快;服务贸易自由化的阻力又小于货物贸易自由化的阻力,其发展速度快于货物贸易,并据此提出我国应采取的对策建议。     

中国与欧盟制成品产业内贸易及其影响因素

本文采用Grubel-Llyod指数,对中国与欧盟制成品产业内贸易水平及其影响因素进行了探讨。研究发现,中国与欧盟整体的制成品贸易以产业内贸易为主,但对不同的欧盟国家以及不同类型的制成品产业,其产业内贸易水平与发展趋势有着较大的差异。通过计量分析,认为欧盟国家的市场规模、对外开放水平、对华直接投资、研发水平以及中国与欧盟国家的市场规模差异等变量,均对中欧制成品产业内贸易水平有显著影响,但这种影响对于不同类型的制成品产业是不一样的。     

我国服务贸易与货物贸易的动态相关性研究——基于脉冲响应函数方法的实证分析

本文运用脉冲响应函数法与方差分解法,考察了我国1982-2007年间服务贸易与货物贸易之间的长期动态关系,并进一步分析了其内部结构的互动影响。结果显示:我国货物贸易和服务贸易之间存在互为影响的动态关系,现阶段货物贸易发展对服务贸易有较大的促进作用,且其作用甚至大于服务贸易自身所产生的作用。但服务贸易对货物贸易的作用微小并具有一定的时滞性,货物贸易增长的动力基本源于自身。进一步分析发现,服务贸易对制造贸易的促进作用主要源于生产性服务贸易部门,消费性服务贸易部门对制造业贸易的促进作用较小。而生产性服务贸易部门中又以现代生产性服务贸易对制造贸易的促进作用较大,传统生产性服务贸易对制造贸易的促进作用较小,这与我国目前服务贸易国际竞争力的状况相吻合。最后,提出相关的政策建议。     

Determinants of Bilateral Trade Protection

In this paper, determinants of bilateral protection levels are empirically identified when controlling for multilateral trade regulation and importing‐country‐specific factors. Strong empirical support is provided of that three bilateral factors are influencing the bilateral protection level. Specifically, a country's protection level on goods from a trade partner is positively affected by the domestic import penetration of goods produced by the trade partner, negatively influenced by the intra‐industry traded share of these imports and positively affected by the trade partner's protection level on domestic goods. Moreover, very high explanatory values are provided in the cross‐section estimations, indicating that these determinants, policy regulations and importer‐specific factors jointly explain almost all of the variation in bilateral protection levels. The results are general in the sense that estimations are performed for a large sample of bilateral trade relations including 22 trade partners that are highly differentiated in terms of country characteristics. The overall results indicate that, to the extent that policy makers can affect bilateral protection levels under multilateral trade regulation, they act on political‐economy rather than economic goals.     

Granting preferential market access in services sequentially versus jointly with goods

Despite the cost and resource‐effectiveness of joint trade negotiations and complementarities between goods and services‐trade flows, more than 12% of the 132 WTO‐notified services‐trade agreements (STAs) in force until August 2015 were entered into effect sequentially to goods‐trade accords. This stylised fact motivates our study of the determinants of joint versus sequential negotiation/accession of goods and services accords, a subject hitherto unexplored in the growing literature on the determinants of STA membership. Our results suggest larger marginal effects of fundamental economic, geographic, institutional, doing business and services regulatory factors on the propensity of joint negotiation/accession compared to STA formation alone. Moreover, cultural‐distance variables are only found to affect the likelihood of joint preferential liberalisation of goods and services trade, without influencing STA‐only membership.