Intra-EEA Stri Database

Abstract

This paper is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and the arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of OECD countries. The publication of this paper has been authorised by Ken Ash, Director of the Trade and Agriculture Directorate. This document and any map included herein are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area. The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law. This document has been declassified on the responsibility of the Working Party of the Trade Committee under the OECD reference number TAD/TC/WP(2018)13/FINAL.

The costs of regulatory barriers to trade in services

“…Fontagné, Mitaritonna and Signoret (2016 [13]) also find that maximum AVE levels are higher for financial services than for communications, insurance, other business services, and transport. 33 Adopting a methodology closely related to the one chosen for this paper, Benz (2017 [18]) similarly finds the highest AVE levels with respect to financial services, the maximum reported for that sector (1246%) is relatively close to the maximum estimated in this study (1073%). In addition, the range of AVEs provided by Benz (2017 [18]) for communications (between 51% and 299%) is also similar to the non-preferential AVEs for this sector listed in Table 10.…”

“…Similar to earlier studies that drew upon data observed at one specific point in time (e.g. Benz (2017 [18])), the main analysis therefore relies on cross-sectional variation. Compared to previous studies based on a cross-sectional analysis, collapsing the data across the years 2014-2018 reduces the likelihood that our estimates are influenced by mismeasurement or fluctuations affecting observations in a given year.…”

“…In a recent study based on the OECD STRI, Benz (2017 [18]) overcomes this methodological challenge by adding information on countries' internal tradedefined as the share of domestic production that is not exportedto the analysis. This theory-consistent strategy is recommended in the recent literature because it allows for the inclusion of multilateral resistance terms: a set of dummy variables controlling for unobservable characteristics of every exporter and importer (Yotov et al, 2016[3]).…”

“…In additional steps complementing the main analysis, we also run regressions separately for every year and exploit the dataset's longitudinal dimension in panel regressions that include direction-specific pair fixed effects. 18 Standard gravity controls include distance (which corresponds to internal distance in the case of withincountry trade flows), contiguity, common language, shared colonial history, common legal origin, and common religion. In addition, all regressions include two variables to capture the role of RTAs: a dummy equalling one if the two countries share membership of a trade agreement other than the EEA and a dummy equalling one if both trade partners are EEA members.…”

Services trade costs in the United States: A simulation based on the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index

“…The only exception is the European Economic Area (EEA). Services liberalisation within the Single Market of the EEA is measured in the intra-EEA STRI (Benz and Gonzales, 2019).…”