Measuring Services Trade Liberalization and its Impact on Economic Growth: An Illustration

Abstract

Mattoo, Rathindran, and Subramanian explain how the Finally, the authors provide some econometric output growth effect from liberalizing the service sectors evidence-relatively strong for the financial sector and differs from the effect from liberalizing trade in goods.less strong, but nevertheless statistically significant, for They also suggest using a policy-based rather than the telecommunications sector-that openness in services outcome-based measure of the openness of a country's influences long-run growth performance. Their estimates services regime. They construct such openness measures suggest that growth rates in countries with fully open for two key service sectors' basic telecommunications telecommunications and financial services sectors are up and financial services.to 1.5 percentage points higher than those in other countries.This paper-a product of Trade, Development Research Group-is part of a larger effort in the group to assess the implications of liberalizing trade in services. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank,

The Role of Services in Total Productivity Growth of Indian Manufacturing Firms: A Firm Level Analysis Since 2000

“…Lastly, financial sector development in the sixties were found to be a significant predictor of the economic growth. Mattoo et al (2006) in their study had three objectives in mind. The first objective was to explain the impact of liberalization of the services sector and how that differed from the liberalization in the goods sector.…”

Japan's Future in East Asia and the Pacific

“…Japan's general progress on services liberalisation has been well explored elsewhere, as has such reform's capacity to stimulate economic growth more generally (see, for example, Mattoo, Rathindran and Subramanian 2006). Motoshige Itoh has recently identified public services, health care, food services and education as areas where reform remains difficult, but is needed.…”

Services In A Development Round : Three Goals And Three Proposals

“…One study finds that the gains from a cut in services sector protection by half would be five times larger than those from comparable goods trade liberalization (Robinson, et al, 1999). Another suggests that countries that successfully reformed their financial and telecommunications services sector grew, on average, about 1.0 percentage point faster than other countries (Mattoo et al 2005). These findings are not surprising because current levels of protection in services are higher and liberalization would create spillover benefits from the inflow of capital and technology.…”