In light of the financial crises in the emerging markets, the coming-into-force of the financial services agreement under the GATS has been considered a success. While the agreement provides for little new liberalization but rather formalizes the status quo, it has been feared that governments could even backtrack on previous commitments in the belief that more open markets could increase the d...

Due to the lack of political consensus at the previous General Agreement on Trade on Services (GATS), negotiations on the temporary movement of natural persons (Mode 4) have stagnated. However the recent labour shortages in several labour intensive sectors, particularly agriculture, in Australia and New Zealand has recently provoked a serious debate over the implementation of policies that woul...

Two major topics in recent rounds of international trade negotiations have been environmental concerns, and services trade. While each is undoubtedly important, they are unrelated. The service sector emits only a small part of overall pollution, and those service industries that do pollute do not trade internationally. This paper uses data on trade in services from the U.S. Bureau of Economic A...

We are concerned with trade in transport services (not cabotage but rather international shipping, transport, and related logistical services) and the importance of competition and market structure in the sector. We examine implications of liberalization for profits, trade, and national gains from trade. Though past GATS maritime negotiations involved the maritime nations, we also flag interest...

Due to the lack of political consensus at the previous General Agreement on Trade on Services (GATS), negotiations on the temporary movement of natural persons (Mode 4) have stagnated. The growth in the economic literature surrounding this issue has also been lackluster; despite the large welfare gains that have been demonstrated to result from relatively small multilateral liberalizations on s...

I November/December of 1999, leaders from around the world converged on Seattle with the goal of launching a new round of trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This has been dubbed “WTO2000” in recognition of the new millennium. In light of the tremendous growth in world trade over the last fifty years— much of it fueled by multilateral trade liberalizatio...