Services Trade Policies and Economic Integration: New Evidence for Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper applies machine learning to recreate to a high degree of accuracy the OECD's Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) to provide quantitative evidence on the restrictiveness of services policies in 2016 for a sample of developing countries, using regulatory data collected by the World Bank and WTO. Resulting estimates are used to extend the OECD STRI approach to 23 additional countries, producing what we term a Services Policy Index (SPI). Converting the SPI to ad valorem equivalent terms shows that services policies are typically much more restrictive than tariffs on imports of goods, in particular in professional services and telecommunications. The SPI has strong explanatory power for bilateral trade in services at the sectoral level, as well as for aggregate goods and services trade.

Estimating the Economic and Distributional Impacts of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

“…The information was taken from Li (2018). The model was calibrated with ad valorem equivalents of nontariff measures from Cadot, Gourdon, and van Tongeren (2018) for goods and Hoekman and Shepherd (2019) for services. However, we also run the model with AVEs of non-tariff measures for goods from Kee and Nicita (2018) in a sensitivity analysis.…”

“…Source: NTMs in goods by Cadot et al (2018) for NTMs in goods. For services, Hoekman and Shepherd (2019).…”

“…Recently, two studies estimate AVEs of NTMs for a wide range of countries: Cadot et al (2018) and Kee and Nicita (2017) (see Appendix I). For services, there are recent estimations by Hoekman and Shepherd (2019). The estimated AVEs of NTMs on services are much higher than on goods (Figure 5).…”

Services Trade Policy and Industry Performance in African Economies

“…10 The OECD compiles STRI data on an annual basis for OECD member countries and a selection of non-OECD nations, but this does not extend to Africa. See Hoekman and Shepherd (2021). Recent projects to compile information on digital trade policies have more comprehensive coverage of African countries.…”

Effect of the Accession to the World Trade Organization on Commercial Services Exports

“…These barriers are essentially behind-the-border measures, and encompass all discriminatory measures, as well as an exhaustive list of so-called market access limitations (WTO, 2019). Services trade barriers are much broader than barriers to goods (WTO, 2019), and more restrictive than tariffs on imports of goods (e.g., Hoekman and Shepherd, 2021). They are nevertheless different from domestic regulatory measures implemented by governments to pursue legitimate public policy objectives, although such measures may also have trade restrictive effects.…”