Approaches to liberalizing services

Inly since completion of the Uruguay Round have developing countries in East AsOnly since completion of the Uruguay Round have developing countries in East Asia and the Western Hemisphere shown interest in liberalizing services. Ambitious effortsare now being made to incorporate services in liberalization objectives of both sub-regional and regional integration efforts, including in the Asia-Pacific region under APEC and in the Western Hemisphere under the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) process. At the sub-regional level, member countries of both ASEAN (in East Asia) and MERCOSUR (in Latin America) have chosen to follow the liberalization model set forth in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and to open their services markets gradually and piecemeal. In the Western Hemisphere, Mexico has successfully promoted the NAFTA model of a more comprehensive liberalization of services markets - and several Latin American countries have adopted the same approach. Regionally, APEC has chosen a concerted voluntary approach to liberalizing services markets. Within the Western Hemisphere, participants are defining which approach they will use in the negotiations on services launched as part of the FTAA in April 1998. In all these efforts, a stated desire to promote more efficient services markets is often hindered by reluctance to open services markets rapidly or comprehensively because of historically entrenched protectionism in the sector and ignorance of the regulatory measures that impede trade in services. Presumably it would be easier to liberalize services at the sub-regional level, among countries at similar stages of development (although the liberalization's economic value there might be questioned). Liberalizing services at the broader regional level is a difficult and ambitious goal, given the diversity of countries involved in such efforts. Thus liberalization will probably move more slowly at the regional than at the sub-regional level - perhaps even more slowly than at the multilateral level. It is possible that the new round of multilateral talks on services scheduled to begin under the WTO in 2000 may well eclipse the recently begun regional efforts.Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Decentralization,Enterprise Development&Reform,ICT Policy and Strategies,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Trade and Services,Governance Indicators,ICT Policy and Strategies

Evaluating the Contributions of Regional Trade Agreements to Governance of Services Trade

Since the early 1990s, regional trade agreements (RTAs) covering trade in services have proliferated, with 95 RTAs on services notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO) under Article V of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), as of June 2011. This paper discusses how RTAs support or debilitate the GATS in its governance function as the keeper of rules and liberalization commitments on services trade for WTO members. It addresses this question and its implications for governance by focusing on four different issues: architecture; compliance; ability to promote reforms; and actual impact of RTAs in fostering services trade.regional trade agreements; gats; political economy; trade in services; wto; multilateralizing regionalism

The case for a framework agreement on investment

Looking at a rear-view mirror, skeptics assert that efforts to create a plurilateral Investment Framework Agreement (IFA) are doomed. We argue that conditions on the ground have changed: in the 2010s, unlike the 1990s, many countries would welcome an IFA under WTO auspices

Standards and conformity assessment as nontariff barriers to trade

As traditional barriers to trade have fallen, standards, technical regulations, and procedures for assessing conformity have become increasingly important as nontariff barriers to trade. But relatively little is known about the extent and nature of those barriers and even less about their quantitative impact, especially in developing countries. To facilitate trade, regional initiatives on standards and conformity assessment appear to be more promising than a multilateral approach because of the greater trust and commonality of interest at the regional level -especially with regard to mutual recognition agreements. For reasons of both efficiency and cost, developing countries should adopt the standards of their major trading partners rather than develop their own national standards. Developing countries have not been heavily involved in developing international and regional standards; they have been on the sidelines in efforts to rationalize this process. To have greater influence on the development of standards, they should take a more proactive approach to these issues in the International Organization for Standardization, the International Electrical Commission, and related regional and multilateral bodies.Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Labor Policies,Administrative&Regulatory Law,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade and Regional Integration,Health Economics&Finance,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Science Education

投资框架协议的相关事宜

Axel Berger 在第 102 期哥伦比亚大学国际直接投资展望中称，关于多边投资框 架的争论是没有价值的。我们对此持不同观点。继印尼巴厘岛召开的第九届部 长级会议取得成果后，世贸组织（WTO）应启动有关起草 21 世纪投资框架协定 （IFA）的谈判

投资便利化与GATS: 重叠有影响吗?

WTO talks on investment facilitation, launched at the 11th Ministerial Conference in 2017, have garnered significant traction, with negotiations currently involving over 100 Members. Looking ahead, a key challenge will be securing an open plurilateral agreement that bridges definitional and conceptual gaps between proposed investment facilitation and existing GATS disciplines

Investment facilitation and the GATS: Do overlaps matter?

WTO talks on investment facilitation, launched at the 11th Ministerial Conference in 2017, have garnered significant traction, with negotiations currently involving over 100 Members. Looking ahead, a key challenge will be securing an open plurilateral agreement that bridges definitional and conceptual gaps between proposed investment facilitation and existing GATS disciplines

Low-resolution spectroscopy and spectral energy distributions of selected sources towards sigma Orionis

Aims: We investigated in detail nine sources in the direction of the young sigma Orionis cluster, which is considered a unique site for studying stellar and substellar formation. The nine sources were selected because of some peculiar properties, such as extremely red infrared colours or too strong Halpha emission for their blue optical colours. Methods: We took high-quality, low-resolution spectroscopy (R ~ 500) of the nine targets with ALFOSC at the Nordic Optical Telescope. We also re-analyzed [24]-band photometry from MIPS/Spitzer and compiled the best photometry available at the ViJHKs passbands and the four IRAC/Spitzer channels for constructing accurate spectral energy distributions covering from 0.55 to 24 mum. Results: The nine targets were classified into: one Herbig Ae/Be star with a scatterer edge-on disc, two G-type stars, one X-ray flaring, early-M, young star with chromospheric Halpha emission, one very low-mass, accreting, young spectroscopic binary, two young objects at the brown dwarf boundary with the characteristics of classical T Tauri stars, and two emission-line galaxies, one undergoing star formation, and another one whose spectral energy distribution is dominated by an active galactic nucleus. Besides, we discover three infrared sources associated to overdensities in a cold cloud in the cluster centre. Conclusions: Low-resolution spectroscopy and spectral energy distributions are a vital tool for measuring the physical properties and the evolution of young stars and candidates in the sigma Orionis cluster.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Stars and brown dwarfs in the sigma Orionis cluster: the Mayrit catalogue

The young sigma Orionis cluster is an indispensable basis for understanding the formation and evolution of stars, brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects. Our knowledge of its stellar population is, however, incomplete. I present the Mayrit catalogue, that comprises most of the stars and high-mass brown dwarfs of the cluster. The basis of this work is an optical-near infrared correlation between the 2MASS and DENIS catalogues in a circular area of radius 30 arcmin centred on the OB-type binary sigma Ori AB. The analysis is supported on a bibliographic search of confirmed cluster members with features of youth and on additional X-ray, mid-infrared and astrometric data. I list 241 sigma Orionis stars and brown dwarfs with known features of youth, 97 candidate cluster members (40 are new) and 115 back- and foreground sources in the survey area. The 338 cluster members and member candidates constitute the Mayrit catalogue. This catalogue is a suitable input for studying the spatial ditribution, multiplicity, properties and frequency of discs and the complete mass function of sigma Orionis.Comment: accepted for publication in A&A, section 14. Online catalogs and dat

Finding the most variable stars in the Orion Belt with the All Sky Automated Survey

We look for high-amplitude variable young stars in the open clusters and associations of the Orion Belt. We use public data from the ASAS-3 Photometric V-band Catalogue of the All Sky Automated Survey, infrared photometry from the 2MASS and IRAS catalogues, proper motions, and the Aladin sky atlas to obtain a list of the most variable stars in a survey area of side 5 deg centred on the bright star Alnilam (eps Ori) in the centre of the Orion Belt. We identify 32 highly-variable stars, of which 16 had not been reported to vary before. They are mostly variable young stars and candidates (16) and background giants (8), but there are also field cataclysmic variables, contact binaries, and eclipsing binary candidates. Of the young stars, which typically are active Herbig Ae/Be and T Tauri stars with Halpha emission and infrared flux excess, we discover four new variables and confirm the variability status of another two. Some of them belong to the well known sigma Orionis cluster. Besides, six of the eight giants are new variables, and three are new periodic variables.Comment: Astronomische Nachrichten, in pres