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1、精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上Assessing the Benefits to Developing Countries of Liberalisation in Services Trade This is a draft of a report prepared for the OECD Trade Directorate. The author is grateful to KenHeydon, and his colleagues at OECD for extensive comments and help with logistical and bibliographical sup
2、port.John WhalleyThe University of Western Ontario1. INTRODUCTIONa. BackgroundThis paper assesses the present state of quantitative literature which seeks to evaluate the potential impacts which would follow from global services trade liberalisation as it relates to developing countries. It is impor
3、tant to emphasize that what are frequently referred to as developing countries are themselves also a heterogeneous group of countries. They span rapidly growing economies in Asia, negative growth economies (in GDP/capita) in Africa, middle income and very poor countries, small and large, landlocked
4、and ocean access; heavily regulated and recently liberalised. I prefer the term poorer countries, and use this interchangeably with the term developing countries in the text. Much of the literature at issue is relatively recent, and is scattered in working papers and other less accessible sources. P
5、olicy makers clearly need help in unraveling this at times confusing and fragmentary picture of what the research community has to offer to guide their deliberations. This paper aims to do this rather than to advocate particular policy positions on global services liberalisation.b. Nature of Service
6、sThe paper begins by characterizing services as a majority of activity for most OECD economies (as measured by employment, and by value added originating),and a smaller but still large portion of activity for poorer developing countries. It suggests that so-called core services can best be thought o
7、f (see Melvin, 1989) as relating to intermediation through time (banking, insurance) or space (telecoms, transportation, retailing, wholesaling), with a wide range of diverse additional service items making up the balance of what most people refer to as services(tourism, consulting services, governm
8、ent services, utilities). This diverse range of activities is typically treated in quantitative studies as a single homogeneous entity, frequently labeled as services for analytical convenience, when in fact its heterogeneity suggests a different treatment for each. This heterogeneity is, in my view
9、, key to better understanding how services trade liberalisation could affect poorer countries.c. Impacts of Liberalisation on Poorer CountriesThere is a general presumption in the poorer countries that they will lose from global services trade liberalisation since their domestic service industries a
10、re inefficient and non-competitive. This view is despite the arguments from economists as to the gains to domestic consumers from lower prices and the joint benefits which accrue to both exporting and importing countries from exploiting comparative advantage and improved market access opportunities
11、abroad. It is also despite the commonly held view that the production of many services are labor intensive, which economists believe should be the source of comparative advantage for poorer developing countries in services provision. There unfortunately appear to be few if any studies of the relativ
12、e inefficiency of local versus Foreign Service providers in developing country service markets which allow the strength of these arguments to be evaluated on empirical grounds.This caution towards global services trade liberalisation in the developing world seems to reflect two concerns. One is the
13、general assumption in the developing world that any future negotiated global liberalisation of services trade will be largely one sided in the results it will yield. Their belief is that if new WTO multilateral (or even regional) services liberalisation is negotiated, developed country service provi
14、ders will likely gain significantly improved access to developing country service markets, but the converse (significantly improved access for developing country service providers to developed country service markets) will likely not happen. Asymmetry in negotiating power is one reason cited for thi
15、s possible outcome. The presumption is that the present regulatory structure for most service market segments will remain in place in OECD countries, and few significant improvements in access to developed country markets for developing country service providers will occur. This outcome, for instanc
16、e, is reflected in recent US bilateral agreements, including the US-Chile agreement.In reality, through the process of ongoing regulatory reform in the OECD,changes are in fact being made in market access arrangements for developing country service providers, though these are not necessarily reflected in scheduled commitments in GATS in the WTO. Another important and neglected dimension to this conclusion is South-South trade, and the potential that develop
