Services in Regioanl Trade Agreements: Implications for India

Service sector has emerged as the largest and fastest-growing sector in the global economy in the last two decades, providing more than 60 per cent of global output and, in many countries, an even larger share of employment. The growth in services has also been accompanied by the rising share of services in world transactions. In fact trade in services has grown as fast as trade in goods in the period 1990- 2003 (6% per annum). In recent years the number of international agreements aiming to liberalize and promote trade in services has increased dramatically. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), negotiated as part of the Uruguay Round and followed up in Doha round has propelled the process of services negotiation but till date has limited success. In contrast to this, much of the recent and current international treaty addressing trade in services has occurred at the regional and bilateral levels. Traditionally, Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have focused on the liberalization of merchandise trade among members but new trends show inclusion of services. Examples include the Chile, Singapore Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the US, and the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which have provisions allowing temporary entry of business professionals into member countries to facilitate trade in services. Among the roughly 153 RTAs operational in the world today, 43 are economic integration agreements notified under the GATS Article V.2 Between 2001 and 2006, 35 RTAs with services, constituting approximately 20% of all notifications, were notified to the WTO. Some of the important agreements in Asia Pacific region which included services are Australia and New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreements (ANCERTA), ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS), etc. These efforts were followed by a proliferation of similar agreements such as that between Singapore and Australia in 2001, and Singapore and the US in 2002. As of 2006, the US has concluded more than 10 RTAs with strong services chapters. The EU has also entered into RTAs with services chapters with countries such as South Africa, Mexico and Chile. While the preceding examples are drawn from North-South RTAs, even the South-South RTAs are seen to be conforming to the trend. The growth of output in the service sector in India has been spectacular in recent times which got reflected in a higher contribution in the GDP. As a consequence of this, along with its move in the GATS negotiation, India has also plunged into Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) through signing the India-Singapore CECA. Of late, its attempt to convert India-Sri Lanka FTA into another CECA and negotiation attempts with partners like EU, Malaysia, etc. clearly shows its inclination to include services in the new agreements. Services are intangible, mostly indivisible and can’t be stored. Its developmental impact though quite overwhelming is difficult to measure. The data on service sector is also difficult to capture. Due to all these, it is problematic for a developing country to develop its offers and commitments in a structured fashion in case of trade negotiation for services sector. At the same time, many service sectors are under tight control even in developed countries. Licensing, quota, regulatory structure, citizenship criteria, local content, subsidies etc are quite common in service sectors. Since services trade often requires (temporary) movement of provider or consumer, restrictions on services mostly arises from regulations and discriminating requirements regarding this movement. Therefore barriers to trade in services are particularly difficult to identify. Also, most of these barriers do not occur at the border. Developing countries are apprehensive in case of north-south services negotiation due to lack of transparency and information about the developed country service sector. Service sector commitments are riddled with lots of market access limitations and MFN exemptions which is common even in case of regional negotiation. Depending upon the sensitivity as well as technological levels, several components of different services are generally kept unbound. Sometimes, some modes of services (such as mode 4) have been kept unbound even for sub-component of a sector. Developmental impact of any services agreement needs to be judged from the commitment as well as negotiation strategy. This is important as several countries are pursuing GATS Plus commitments. The CECA has progressed beyond GATS understanding the current business environment. Negotiations on domestic regulation in GATS have progressed to the level of framing a text for adoption while in case of regional agreements more ambitious approaches are observed. The present paper focuses on India’s attempt to integrate with the world economy with service sector liberalistaion and understanding its strategy in services negotiation. The structure of the paper is as follows. Initial section will focus on introduction and an overview of some select RTAs having special attention towards service sectors. Section 2 provides a brief overview of India’s performance in the services sector, followed by a more detailed examination of the contribution of the service sector to growth, and the composition of services trade in Section 3. In particular, we’ll discuss the change in pattern of trade from the traditional goods sector to services. Section 4 examines India’s involvement in regional trade blocs keeping an eye on services sector. Several potential RTAs with services focus will also be discussed. The paper will make an attempt to develop a negotiating format for some of the important services understanding the current status of services in the partner countries as well as in India. While doing so, it will make an attempt to identify major barriers faced by India in some of the exportable services. These issues will be discussed in section 5. Section 6 will provide conclusion and induction from the major findings.regional trade; services

Accounting Books of Argentina: Publications, Research and Institutional Background.

La literatura contable en lengua inglesa ofrece relativamente poca información sobre las investigaciones y publicaciones realizadas en Latinoamérica, tanto en el pasado como en la actualidad. Con el objetivo de contribuir a cerrar la brecha, hemos investigado esta temática en la Argentina. The English accounting literature offers relatively little insight into past and current research and publication efforts in Latin America. In trying to fill some of this gap we investigated this issue from the viewpoint of Argentina.Argentina, siglo 20, contabilidad, instituciones, publicaciones, autores, investigación. Argentina, 20th century, accounting, institutions, publications, authors, research.

A Comparative Study of the Impact of Regimes in Latin America’s Education Systems: The Cases of Mercosur, Alba-Tcp, and Pa

This thesis presents a comparative study of the regional education policies and programs in three Latin American (LA) regional entities (hereafter ‘regimes’ and ‘regionalisms’): The Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), and Pacific Alliance (PA). Each of these represents different regionalisms coexisting in LA (hegemonic, post-hegemonic, and counter-hegemonic regionalisms), which makes them ideal for comparative analysis. This project aims to compare these very diverse regimes to interrogate the similarities and dissimilarities, as well as discover who (the regional or the global) is shaping education systems in this area of the world. These objectives are articulated in the research questions: How do different types of regimes define the education policies implemented at the regional level? And, how is the regional shaping the regional educational ideologies, or is the region following global education governance and standards?The study begins with the content and thematic analysis of 68 regional documents (30 from MERCOSUR, 21 from PA, and 17 from ALBA). A comparative analysis of these documents follows, using education programs as common categories. Finally, it compares regional policies and programs against global educational standards (from MDGs, EFA, and SDGs), looking for the presence and impact of global goals in regional documents. The comparative analysis concludes that it is possible to see characteristics of the type of regionalism in all the regional educational programs in which each of them was developed. Therefore, despite the similarities, regional educational programs and policies are not isomorphic in this world region. However, some similarities also led to the conclusion that global governance remains a strong force in LA regionalisms. The conclusion section raises some concerns and hypotheses regarding the coexistence of both regional and global policy governance and the apparent lack of isomorphism across LA regimes. The study contributes to the understanding of regionalism in LA by presenting a novel comparison within the field of comparative regionalism that looks at LA regions without using Europe as a benchmark. In addition, it employs and merges different categorizations of regionalism traditionally used for separate regions of the world

Surgimiento de actividades de exportación exitosas en Uruguay: cuatro casos específicos

En este trabajo se presenta el análisis de cuatro casos específicos de surgimiento de cuatro actividades de exportación exitosas de Uruguay: software de computación, productos madereros, caviar y carne de esturión, y vacunas para animales. En cada uno de esos casos específicos se trata cómo empresas, asociaciones y varios gobiernos a varios niveles han manejado crisis de mercado y facilitado el suministro de los bienes públicos necesarios para cada actividad. El análisis de estos casos específicos presenta además una descripción de las características de los actores principales en cada ramo de actividad así como las externalidades positivas que brindan a los emuladores, especialmente la difusión de conocimientos sobre exportación. También se presenta en cada área un caso opuesto de actividad menos exitosa (electrónica, vino, carne de rana y biotecnología, respectivamente) así como una sección sobre implicaciones de políticas.Agriculture, Exports, Manufacturing, Services, Uruguay

ENLACES: Transformative Educational Policy for the Latin American and Caribbean Region

This capstone paper explores ENLACES, the Latin American and Caribbean Meeting Space for Higher Education, or in Spanish, Espacio de Encuentro Latinamericano y Caribeño de Educación Superior (ENLACES). In the same fashion that the UNESCO-Bologna Accords gave rise to the European Higher Education Area, so, too, did the UNESCO-International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean give rise to ENLACES. ENLACES is an evolving, transformative education policy that promotes the region’s integration and internationalization of higher education through collaborative means. This paper explores the region’s educational environment during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that led to the creation of the ENLACES, presents a stakeholder analysis of the policy, examines its goals, objectives, and strategies of implementation, and evaluates its strengths and weakness. Records from regional and global conferences are the primary sources for this policy analysis

Management education in Ibero-America : an exploratory analysis and perspective

Considering the importance of management education for society and the pedagogical inadequacies that pose a threat to academic institutions, this article develops an exploratory approach for evaluating and monitoring the quality of management education within an Ibero American context. Latin American countries and Spain tend to think of themselves as an Ibero American region, so the overview of key issues in management education in this article is pertinent to the entire region. The data is important to policymakers who wish to enhance the quality of higher education, since well trained managers contribute to successful business strategies and superior organizational performance. Unfortunately, there is almost no empirical work available on the performance and effectiveness of higher education in Ibero American countries. Our study helps bridge that gap by providing useful data for evaluating and reflecting upon some of the variables associated with management education in a sample of Ibero American universities.Publicad

Instituciones políticas, procesos de diseño de políticas y resultados de las políticas en Chile

Este articulo caracteriza los rasgos principales del proceso de diseño de políticas en Chile. El articulo resalta la influencia de las instituciones políticas en dicho proceso y examina la conexión entre el diseño de políticas y el resultado final. Los rasgos principales del proceso de diseño Chileno de políticas son el sistema electoral y el sistema de partidos asociativo, caracterizados por dos coaliciones establecidas, un Ejecutivo poderoso con el control sobre la agenda política, una magistratura independiente, una burocracia que es relativamente libre de corrupción juzgada por los criterios de la OECD, y una serie de vetos en el proceso de diseño de políticas que permiten a facciones afectadas bloquear el cambio de políticas. En consistencia con la estructura teórica de Spiller y Tommasi (2003), el número de actores que interactúan repetidamente y la predictabilidad de la implementación de políticas y una aplicación legal conducen a un proceso de diseño de políticas en el cual los costos de operación son bajos y los intercambios políticos ínter temporales son creíbles. Los grupos de oposición que ejercen su derecho a veto le dan a estos intercambios ínter temporales su credibilidad, aunque también pueden bloquear las reformas. Analizando las políticas desde una perspectiva transversal, encontramos que las políticas en las cuales los intereses de los políticos son mejor representados y las cuales llevan a un cambio exógeno rápido, están asociadas con mas éxito hacia la reforma. En contraste, las políticas que no comparten ningún interés con la rama ejecutiva y con los varios grupos de oposición, tienden a estancarse.

Department Publications 1996

This publication is a list of staff papers, extension publications, Economic Development Center bulletins, Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy papers, The Retail Food Industry Center working papers, journal articles, books, chapters, monographs, speeches, and theses published by the University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics in 1996.