Trade in services and trade in goods: differences and complementarities

The purpose of this paper is double. First, we empirically explore to what extent the determinants of trade in services differs from those of trade in goods and, second, by the use of instrumental variables, we explore for potential complementarities between bilateral trade in goods and bilateral trade in services. By the use of gravity equations, the main results show that "bilateral trust and contract enforcement environment", "networks", "labor markets" and "technology and technology of communication" have higher impact on service trade than on trade in goods; finally, after instrumenting for endogeneity, we found that bilateral trade in goods explains bilateral trade in services: the resulting estimated elasticity is close to 1. Reciprocally, though to a lesser extent, bilateral trade in services affects positively bilateral trade in goods: a 10% increase in trade in services raises traded goods by 4.6%.international trade in services ; trade in goods ; gravity equations

The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines: A Suggested Revision (March 26, 2020)

The FTC and DOJ requested comments on their draft Vertical Merger Guidelines in January 2020. This article is a complete alternative set of suggested Vertical Merger Guidelines that reflects and supplements the approach explained in the comments submitted by the author along with Jonathan. Baker, Nancy Rose and Fiona Scott Morton, as well as their other comments, and might be read in conjunction with those comments. This suggested revision of the Agencies’ draft expands the list of potential competition harms and provides illustrative examples. It expands and unifies the discussion and treatment of potential competitive benefits. It deletes the quasi-safe harbor and suggests the circumstances under which competitive harms raise lessened concerns on the one hand and heightened concerns on the other

Learning from 20 Years of Payments for Ecosystem Services in Costa Rica

Costa Rica's Payments for Ecosystems Services (PES) programme has become something of an icon in the world of conservation. Its innovative blend of economic and regulatory instruments - and its hitches and successes - provide a valuable source of inspiration for other countries that are looking for effective ways to conserve and regenerate ecosystems. Since 1997, nearly one million hectares of forest in Costa Rica have been part of the PES programme at one time or another, and forest cover has now returned to over 50 per cent of the country's land area, from a low of just 20 per cent in the 1980s. What lessons can be learnt from the 20 years since it was founded? Also published in Spanish, this paper is for local practitioners, international researchers and donors who are interested in the Costa Rican experience

Deep integration, nondiscrimination, and Euro-Mediterranean free trade

"Deep integration"--explicit government actions to reduce the market-segmenting effect of domestic regulatory policies through coordination and cooperation--is becoming a major dimension of some regional integration agreements, led by the European Union. Health and safety regulations, competition laws, licensing and certification regimes, and administrative procedures such as customs clearance can affect trade (in ways analogous to non-tariff barriers) even though their underlying intent may not be to discriminate against foreign suppliers of goods and services. Whether preferential trade agreements (PTAs) can be justified in a multilateral trading system depends on the extent to which formal intergovernmental agreements are technically necessary to achieve the deep integration needed to make markets more contestable. The more need for formal cooperation, the stronger the case for regional integration. Whether PTAs are justified regionally also depends on whether efforts to reduce market segmentation are applied on a nondiscriminatory basis. If innovations to reduce transaction or market access costs extend to both members and nonmembers of a PTA, regionalism as an instrument of trade and investment becomes more attractive. Using a standard competitive general equilibrium model of the Egyptian economy, the authors find that the static welfare impact of a"deep"free trade agreement is far greater than the impact that can be expected from a classic"shallow"agreement. Under some scenarios, welfare may increase by more than 10 percent of GDP, compared with close to zero under a shallow agreement. Given Egypt's highly diversified trading patterns, a shallow PTA with the European Union could be merely diversionary, leading to a small decline in welfare. Egypt already has duty-free access to the European Union for manufactures, so the loss in tariff revenues incurred would outweigh any new trade created. Large gains in welfare from the PTA are conditional on eliminating regulatory barriers and red tape-in which case welfare gains may be substantial: 4 to 20 percent growth in real GNP.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Decentralization,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade and Regional Integration,Economic Theory&Research,Rules of Origin,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT

Broadening WTO membership : key accession issues.

n.a.WTO-Regeln; Mitgliedschaft; Welt;

DR-CAFTA and Worker’s Rights: Moving from Paper to Practice

This study analyses the “White Paper” projects and initiatives taken by the US government to improve labor rights practice in DR-CAFTA countries. Based on a three year study, WOLA has concluded that U.S. funding for projects to strengthen the enjoyment and enforcement of labor rights in the DR-CAFTA countries is insufficient to address institutional weakness and pervasive impunity. In this report WOLA defines labor law reforms needed in the six participating countries and recommends implementation methods

Transparency about net neutrality: A translation of the new European rules into a multi-stakeholder model

The new European framework directive contains a number of policy objectives in the area of net neutrality. In support of these objectives, the universal service directive includes a transparency obligation for ISPs. This paper proposes a multi-stakeholder model for the implementation of this transparency obligation. The model is a multi-stakeholder model in the sense that it treats the content and form of the transparent information in close connection with the parties involved in the provision of the information and the processes in which they take part. Another crucial property of the model is that it distinguishes between technical and user-friendly information. This distinction makes it possible to limit the obligation to ISPs to the information for which they are in the best position to provide: the technical information on the traffic management measures that they apply, e.g., which traffic streams are subject to special treatment? Which measures are applied and when? The public availability of this technical information creates the opportunity for the other parties in the model to step in and contribute to the formulation of the user-friendly information for end users: which applications and services receive special treatment? When is their effect noticeable? It is expected that the involvement of other parties will lead to multiple, complementary routes for the formulation of the user-friendly information. Thus, the user-friendly information emerges in ways driven by market players and stakeholders that would be difficult to design and lay down in advance in the transparency obligation. --net neutrality,transparency,traffic management

Regulation and competition in the Turkish telecommunications industry: an update

This chapter provides an overview of the state of liberalization, competition and regulation of major segments of the telecommunications industry in Turkey. It shows that the competitive stance of the regulatory authority and the development of actual competition has been uneven across segments. Specifically, the degree of competition has been higher in the mobile segment relative to fixed telephony or broadband. The chapter also discusses the new Electronic Communications Law and argues that although not perfect, it provides a coherent basis on which the regulatory authority can pursue competitive objectives in a more even manner. However, the actual development of competition will depend a lot on how the law and the ensuing secondary legislation are actually implemented