This book aims at contributing to address some of the challenge that developing countries, especially the least-developing countries, face in the design of trade in service policies and to provide governments with tools to better incorporate services in their export strategies, including negotiations and cooperation with trading partners, and unilateral reforms. This book helps to identify key policy challenges faced by developing country trade negotiators, regulatory policy officials and/or service suppliers. Management of both policy reforms and trade agreements requires investments in...

The past two decades have seen exciting changes with developing countries emerging as exporters of services. Technological developments now make it easier to trade services across borders. But other avenues are being exploited: tourists visit not just to sightsee but also to be treated and educated, service providers move abroad under innovative new schemes, and some developing countries defy traditional notions by investing abroad in services. 'Exporting Services: A Developing Country Perspective' takes a brave approach, combining exploratory econometric analysis with detailed case studies...

This toolkit provides a novel approach and a set of tools that allow policymakers and analysts to identify non-tariff measures (NTMs), assess their trade restrictiveness and impact on prices and welfare, and to strengthen the institutional coordination mechanism, transparency, and regulatory governance on NTMs. It also aims at encouraging economies to increasingly address the NTM agenda from a domestic competitiveness and/or poverty perspective rather than from a mercantilist standpoint of concessions to trading partners. NTMs are policy measures, other than ordinary customs tariffs, that can...

The temporary movement of labor is one mode of delivering services across borders. Unlike the movement of capital, and despite significant returns to mobility, labor movement remains highly restricted and politically sensitive. To circumvent this problem, the use of bilateral labor agreements (BLAs) may serve as a potential complementary means of increasing temporary labor mobility, particularly among workers in the services sector. BLAs are generally not part of trade agreements, nor are they designed to promote services exports by the sending country, although they could be used to do so....

'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,...

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,...