International Trade in Services—Editorial Introduction (original) (raw)
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There is rapid growth in international trade in services, especially in the exchange of services between developed and developing countries. Unfortunately, classic internationalization theories developed for goods have limited applicability to understanding services' growth. The particular attributes of services (intangibility, simultaneity, heterogeneity, and perishability), and the spatial and temporal constraints that result from them, require adaptations and modifications to extant theories to make them relevant for contemporary services. As a contribution to this transitioning process, we develop a framework to describe and explain stages in the internationalization of services as defined by the country location of ownership, production, and consumption. Additionally, we propose research directions for the modification and application of broader managerial and international business models to facilitate research on trade in services.
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Goods and services are bundled together in economic analysis, which largely considers them to be similar despite contrary empirical evidence. Services have been largely absent from international political economy literature, so current explanations of international trade in services liberalisation and integration leave a lot to be desired. Using the WTO framework of the four modes of service supply, this thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of international trade in both healthcare and accountancy services. This empirical investigation sheds light on services' patterns of internationalisation and the relationships between different modes of trade. It finds that services differing from each other in many aspects are nevertheless intemationahsing following similar patterns and particularly through commercial presence. The empirical findings of this study are supported by an enquiry into the nature of services. They form the basis of the development of the theory of services co...
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Journal of International Economics, 2011
We provide a novel set of stylized facts on …rms engaging in international trade in services, using unique …rm-level data on service exports and imports from the world's second largest service exporter, the United Kingdom. Less than 10% of …rms trade in services but they can be found in all sectors of the UK economy. While the service sector accounts for over 80% of total exports and imports, the frequency and trade intensity of service traders is often higher in sectors such as high-tech manufacturing. Service traders are bigger, more productive and are more likely to be foreign owned or part of a multinational enterprise. These 'trade premia'are smaller for service traders than for goods traders, with the exception of skill intensity which is higher for service traders. There are also signi…cant di¤erences between exporters and importers of services. Service exporters are smaller and less capital intensive but more productive and skill intensive than service importers. We show that most …rms only export or import a single type of service and trade with a small number of countries. Trade volume, employment, turnover and value added are highly concentrated among a small group of …rms which trade with many countries and/or in many types of services. Interestingly, trade is also concentrated within …rms. The top export and import destination make up 70% of the average …rm's total trade and the top services type around 90%. We also decompose the cross-sectional variation in …rm exports and imports of services into the extensive and intensive margins of trade and …nd that the intensive margin accounts for around 70% of the total variation.
IJRSSIIR GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TRADE IN SERVICES: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
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The most significant change in the International trade is the inclusion of services. The global economy witnessed significant changes in the service sector. Five years of studies, discussions, explorations and negotiations at Uruguay Round resulted in GATS and were enforced on 1 January, 1995. The present paper attempts to study, the GATS, which is more about rules regulating the conditions under which foreign service suppliers are allowed to operate in domestic markets and kinds of discrimination they are encountering. The present paper intends to examine the regulations included in the GATS.
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This paper illustrates the main trends in international trade in services during the last two decades of the last century, focusing particularly on developing and transition countries. The Introduction briefly exposes some of the shortcomings and methodological problems affecting statistics on international trade in services, and explains why BOP data, albeit inadequate, are the only source available so far to carry out a comprehensive comparative and historical analysis in this domain. Section 2 describes basic trade trends for each of the 10 services sectors, identifies the major exporters of services among developing and transition countries and analyzes the evolution of their relative position in international trade in services. It shows that most of them are either large semi-industrialized Asian countries or European transition countries. Yet, there are also cases of other developing countries exhibiting a strong tendency towards specializing in one or few specific services sub-sectors. Section 3 examines global trade trends for services as a whole. They show that services exports have been the most dynamic component of world trade and the world market share of developing countries has been on the rise. However, a generalized deceleration in the expansion of world trade in services occurred in the late 1990s. The growth rate of services exports from developing countries slowed down, and their ability to import services also declined, with a negative impact on their development prospects. In the Conclusions, a tentative explanation for the aforementioned results is proposed. Most export-oriented services activities in developing countries are concentrated in traditional services sectors. They are also poorly integrated to the rest of the domestic economy. Thus, their potential as engines for growth is relatively weak. The weight of these
Barriers and liberalization of trade in services
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The construction of trade in value-added statistics is an important milestone for services research because it has unveiled the actual importance of services in trade and global value chains activities. Taking into account services inputs in manufacturing exports, export share of services has increased from 23 per cent to 45 per cent (OECD and WTO, 2013).
International Trade: Services Included
2006
The European Union's strong positions in international services trade are mainly in finance and insurance, as well as in computing wherethey are now challenged by large emerging countries. The United Kingdom appears to be the only large European country specialized inservices with strong growth. But a large share of international "trade" in services is in the activity of companies located abroad. In certaincases, notably that of France, including them changes the picture substantially. The advantages of the various European countries could bereshaped by the realization of the single market in services. By eliminating certain regulations, the services directive will open markets tocompetition that are, in some cases, still very closed. It could boost intra-European exchanges that are relatively under-developed today.