140 likes | 251 Views
SERVICES TRADE RESTRICTIVENESS: PROFESSIONAL SERVICES . OECD Experts Meeting on the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) Paris, 2-3 July 2009 Massimo Geloso Grosso and Rainer Lanz OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate. OUTLINE. Review of the methodology Results Robustness checks
E N D
SERVICES TRADE RESTRICTIVENESS: PROFESSIONAL SERVICES OECD Experts Meeting on the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) Paris, 2-3 July 2009 Massimo Geloso Grosso and Rainer Lanz OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate
OUTLINE • Review of the methodology • Results • Robustness checks • Relevance for trade • Conclusions
IDENTIFICATION OF BARRIERS • Identification according to three criteria • Regulations covered by the GATS framework • Restrictions included in RTAs • Regulations identified as relevant at the 2008 OECD Experts Meeting on Business Services • Main sources of information • OECD PMR • OECD TAD survey • OECD FDI Regulatory Restrictiveness Index
CATEGORIES OF MEASURES • Restrictions on foreign ownership and other market entry conditions • Restrictions on the movement of people • Discriminatory measures, standards and equivalence • Price controls and regulations on market behaviour • Barriers to competition • Regulatory transparency and licensing/permit systems
CLASSIFICATION OF RESTRICTIONS • STRI according to the GATS framework • Market access and national treatment • Domestic regulation and other • Modes of supply • Establishment of firms versus their ongoing operations • Discriminatory versus non-discriminatory measures
SCORING AND WEIGHTING • All variables are transformed into binary • 95% of the measures are binary • Expert judgment forms the basis for the weighting scheme • Weights to each category of measures according to the ranking at the Experts Meeting on Business Services • Equal weights have been applied to measures within each category • Other weighting schemes have been employed as robustness checks • Principal component analysis • Equal weights • Random weights
ROBUSTNESS CHECKS AND RELEVANCE FOR TRADE • STRI robust to all alternative weighting schemes • Spearman rank correlations of weighting schemes • Equal weights: 0.84 • PCA weights: 0.84 • STRI negatively associated with: • Imports (EBOPS) • Inward FDI • Inward foreign affiliates sales
CONCLUSIONS • Restrictions on foreign ownership and commercial establishment in general • Impediments to mode 4 play a non-negligible role • Market access and national treatment measures have a similar significance as domestic regulatory and other measures • The STRI is remarkably robust to alternative weighting schemes and reflects trade restrictiveness