Right here, right now? New evidence on the economic effects of services trade reform

Abstract

This paper provides evidence on the "when, how and where" of the effects of service trade policy reforms, discussing short-term impacts on services trade as well as on the performance of downstream manufacturing industries. A combination of novel methodological approaches is used to be able to track impacts over time and along the supply chain. The OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index serves as the measure for trade policy reform. Results show that reducing policy barriers to services trade can increase services imports already in the short run, and that benefits continue to grow over time. The impact of services trade reforms may still vary significantly depending on the nature of the policy change, the economic context, and the targeted mode of services supply. Finally, services trade reforms can have sizeable spillover effects on the productivity of manufacturing sectors that use services as intermediate inputs.