Since the mid-1980s a substantial body of research has taken shape on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the WTO and regional trade agreements. However, an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of unilateral services sector liberalization. The literature touches on important linkages between trade and FDI in services and the general pattern of productivity growth and economic development. This paper surveys the literature on services trade, focusing on contributions that investigate the determinants of international trade and investment in services, the potential gains from greater trade, and efforts to cooperate to achieve such liberalization through trade agreements. There is increasing evidence that services liberalization is a major potential source of gains in economic performance, including productivity in manufacturing and the coordination of activities both between and within firms. The performance of service sectors, and thus services policies, may also be an important determinant of trade volumes, the distributional effects of trade, and overall patterns of economic growth and development. At the same time, services trade is also a source of increasing political unease about the impacts of globalization on labor markets, linked to worries about offshoring and the potential pressure this places on wages in high income countries.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=1533220

Services Trade and Policy

/pdf/services-trade-and-policy-3nhzflp21a.pdf

Acknowledgments An Introduction to Medical Tourism Plastic Surgery is Not Peanuts: Economic Growth and Dependency Offshore Doctors: The Demand for Medical Tourism Would You Like a Safari With Your Lasik Surgery? The Supply of Medical Tourism Promoting Medical Tourism: The Advantages Promoting Medical Tourism: The Obstacles Inequalities in Healthcare and the Role of Macroeconomic Policy References

Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

Hoekman, Maskus, and Saggi analyze national and international policy options to encourage the international transfer of technology, distinguishing between four major channels of such transfer: trade in products, trade in knowledge, foreign direct investment, and intra-national and international movement of people. They develop a typology of country types and appropriate policy rules of thumb as a guide to both national policymakers and rule making in the World Trade Organization, as policies should differentiate between countries. The authors also develop some rules of thumb for policy intervention. These include: - Liberal trade policies for all types of countries. - Temporary encouragement of foreign direct investment inflows for low-income countries. - Licensing for technical transformation and adaptive investments by local firms to apply technologies. - Policy options for source economies to encourage international tranfer of technology to poor countries, including fiscal incentives, improvement of flows of public-domain technologies with appropriate subsidies, and price differentiation for exports of intellectual property products. This paper - a product of the Trade Team, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to analyze issues related to the design of special and differential treatment of developing countries in the WTO.

Transfer of Technology to Developing Countries: Unilateral and Multilateral Policy Options

This paper examines the relationship between the number and rights of low-skilled migrant workers in high-income countries. It identifies a trade-off: Countries with large numbers of low-skilled migrant workers offer them relatively few rights, while smaller numbers of migrants are typically associated with more rights. We discuss the number-vs.-rights trade-off in theory and practice as an example of competing goods, raising the question of whether numbers of migrants or rights of migrants should get higher priority. There is no easy or universal answer, but avoiding an explicit discussion of the issue – as has been done in recent guest worker debates – can obscure an important policy choice.

/pdf/numbers-vs-rights-trade-offs-and-guest-worker-programs1-5bx0op2k22.pdf

Numbers vs. Rights: Trade-Offs and Guest Worker Programs1

This book presents the economics, law, and politics of temporary migration. Today, the WTO is dealing with an issue that lies at the interface of two major challenges: trade liberalization and international migration. The book provides economic and legal analysis of these issues, bringing together economists, regulators, negotiators, and private sector stake-holders to illuminate the WTO negotiations and enhance public understanding of thsi important but under-explored area.

/pdf/moving-people-to-deliver-services-1c4dt87b81.pdf

Moving people to deliver services

The previous General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations produced little liberalization of the movement of individual service providers (mode 4), and the potentially large global gains from such movement remain unrealized. In the current negotiations, as part of the Doha Development Agenda, developing countries are seeking greater openness in their area of comparative advantage: the movement of providers unrelated to commercial presence abroad. At the same time, many multinational firms would like easier intra-corporate movement of their personnel. We describe how this coincidence of interest could be harnessed to deliver greater openness at least for skilled service providers.

/pdf/moving-people-to-deliver-services-how-can-the-wto-help-2e8mevy0ta.pdf

Moving People to Deliver Services : How Can the WTO Help?

The previous General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations produced little liberalization of the movement of individual service providers (mode 4), and the potentially large global gains from suchmovement remain unrealized. In the current negotiations, as part of the Doha Development Agenda, developing countries are seeking greater openness in their area of comparative advantage: the movement of providers unrelated to commercial presence abroad. At the same time, many multinational firms would like easier intra-corporate movement of their personnel. We describe how this coincidence of interest could be harnessed to deliver greater openness at least for skilled service providers.

Moving people to deliver services: how can the WTO help?

The previous General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations produced little liberalization of the movement of individual service providers (mode 4), and the potentially large global gains from such movement remain unrealized. In the current negotiations, as part of the Doha Development Agenda, developing countries are seeking greater openness in their area of comparative advantage: The movement of providers unrelated to commercial presence abroad. At the same time, many multinational firms would like easier intra-corporate movement of their personnel. The authors describe how this coincidence of interest could be harnessed to deliver greater openness for skilled service providers. This paper - a product of Trade, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the implications of liberalizing trade in services.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/34012.pdf?abstractid=610279

Richard Self

Papers

Moving people to deliver services

Moving People to Deliver Services : How Can the WTO Help?

Moving people to deliver services: how can the WTO help?

Moving People to Deliver Services: How Can the WTO Help?