'Regulatory Assessment Toolkit: A Practical Methodology for Assessing Regulation on Services Trade and Investment' provides guidance on how to assess and reform the regulatory policies of service trade industries. The toolkit can help government officials evaluate whether their regulatory framework addresses market failures, achieves public interest goals in an efficient manner, and promotes the development of an efficient domestic services market. Depending on the circumstances and the needs of the authorities, the toolkit can serve different purposes, including supporting regulatory reform,...

Economic, technological, and political shifts as well as changing business strategies have driven firms to unbundle production processes and disperse them across countries. Thanks to these changes, developing countries can now increase their participation in global value chains (GVCs) and thus become more competitive in agriculture, manufacturing and services. This is a paradigm shift from the 20th century when countries had to build the entire supply chain domestically to become competitive internationally. For policymakers, the focus is on boosting domestic value added and improving access...

Valuing Services in Trade: A Toolkit for Competitiveness Diagnostics provides a framework, guidance, and practical tools for conducting an analysis and diagnostics of the trade competitiveness of a country's services sector. The proposed methods subsequently identify the main constraints to improved competitiveness and the appropriate policy responses. Valuing Services in Trade has been successfully tested on country-specific assessments and is designed to address a wider audience, including policy makers in developing countries and development practitioners in international organizations,...