Regulatory bindings, policy uncertainty, and market access in services

Unlike trade in goods, market access commitments for services usually comprise regulatory measures as opposed to trade taxes. In other words, they are generally about non-tariff measures (NTMs). In some sectors foreign access may be limited or completely prohibited through quantitative restrictions, e.g. bans on foreign provision of broadcasting or transport services, or requirements that government officials fly on the national airline. More generally, services activities are often regulated. Differences in regulation may then result in additional costs for foreign providers when they contest a market. Because they involve sale of intangibles in the form of service flows rather than physical goods, there is usually some form of direct interaction between service producers and customers. This means that establishment is more likely to be important for service exports than goods exports, resulting in an effective mix of cross-border and FDI related regulatory measures when we discuss market access in services

Nontariff measures : Data concepts and sources

Nontariff measures (NTMs) have become increasingly important in the context of trade liberalization. With declining tariffs, they have been widely discussed at the international level. Plurilateral and bilateral trade agreements have covered them in order to tackle these behind-the-border measures, while acknowledging public policy goals in the interest of individual countries. Given the proliferation of such trade agreements, the analysis of trade policies in particular aims to determine the effect of NTMs by applying different types of information about them. The results of such analysis are hardly comparable and tend to be inconclusive not only due to the different methodologies applied but also due to the different data employed.</p

Non-tariff measure estimations in different impact assessments

The reduction of non-tariff measures (NTMs) has become the key policy variable to evaluate modern and deep free trade agreements (FTAs), such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In this chapter we overview the two main approaches to estimating NTM reductions associated with the implementation of FTAs. We then detail how these reductions are estimated in different impact assessment studies of TTIP, we compare and analyse the main differences in these estimations and how they affect the overall economic impact of TTIP. We find that accounting for differences in the expected NTM reductions can explain a large share of the discrepancies regarding the overall potential economic effects between different impact assessments of TTIP