Challenges and Opportunities for Trade and Financial Integration in Asia and the Pacific

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to explore whether there are principles that can be brought to bear in negotiating the services and investment provisions of trade agreements, and which can help to ensure that the partial reforms achieved under those agreements add to, rather than detract from economic well-being. These principles might be seen as the services and investment equivalents of the "top-down" principle for tariff reform. It is not intended to go as far as developing a negotiating modality for services or investment, as that would be premature. However, the principles developed here could be used by individual countries on a voluntary basis when undertaking negotiations in services and investment.negotiate, service, investment, trade agreement, tariff reform, liberalization