Financial Services Liberalization in the WTO

Financial Services Liberalization in the WTO
Author: Wendy Dobson
Publisher: Washington, DC : Institute for International Economics
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1998
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The stakes were high in the financial services negotiations that were completed in December 1997 at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The developing countries were eager to strengthen and modernize their financial systems. The industrial countries sought access to important emerging markets in Latin America and Asia for their banking, insurance, brokerage, and other financial services firms. In the end, both sides agreed to bind unilateral and regional financial opening and reform that was already under way in many countries, industrial and developing alike. The authors assess the agreement reached in the WTO, identifying its shortcomings and suggesting ways that it can be bolstered in future negotiations. They analyze the impact of the agreement, and of the Asian financial crisis, on the state of liberalization and market opening in several important emerging-market economies--including a summary of the remaining obstacles to establishing efficient and open financial sectors. This book estimates the benefits of opening the financial sector to foreign competition. It assesses the macroeconomic benefits that flow from an improved financial sector and discusses the risks and costs involved in liberalization. The authors conclude with a blueprint for future efforts to liberalize financial services and emphasize that the recent financial services agreement represented only a beginning step in that process.

The World Trade Organization and Trade in Services

The World Trade Organization and Trade in Services
Author: Kern Alexander
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1025
Release: 2008
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004162445

The World Trade Organisation plays the primary role in regulating international trade in goods, services and intellectual property. Traditionally, international trade law and regulation has been analysed primarily from the trade-in-goods perspective. Services are becoming an important competence for the WTO. The institutional, legal and regulatory influence of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) on domestic economic policymaking is attracting increasing attention in the academic and policymaking literature. The growing importance of services trade to the global economy makes the application of the GATS to trade in services an important concern of international economic policy. The GATS contains important innovations that build on the former GATT and existing WTO/GATT trade regime for goods. This book fills a void in the academic and policymaking literature by examining how the GATS governs international trade in services and its growing impact on the regulatory practice of WTO member states. It offers a unique discussion of the major is-sues confronting WTO member states by analysing the GATS and related international trade issues from a variety of perspectives that include law, political economy, regulation, and business. Moreover, the role of the WTO in promoting liberalised trade and economic development has come under serious strain because of the breakdown of the Doha Development Round negotiations. The book analyses the issues in the Doha services debate with some suggested policy approaches that might help build a more durable GATS framework. The book is a welcomed addition to the WTO literature and will serve as a point of reference for academics, policymakers andpractitioners.

WTO Domestic Regulation and Services Trade

WTO Domestic Regulation and Services Trade
Author: Aik Hoe Lim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2014-03-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107062357

Innovative, interdisciplinary, practitioner-oriented insights into the key challenges faced in addressing the services trade liberalization and domestic regulation interface.

The World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization
Author: International Trade Law Center
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 3142
Release: 2007-12-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0387226885

The editors have succeeded in bringing together an excellent mix of leading scholars and practitioners. No book on the WTO has had this wide a scope before or covered the legal framework, economic and political issues, current and would-be countries and a outlook to the future like these three volumes do. 3000 pages, 80 chapters in 3 volumes cover a very interdiscplinary field that touches upon law, economics and politics.

Domestic Regulation and Service Trade Liberalization

Domestic Regulation and Service Trade Liberalization
Author: Pierre Sauve
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2003-08-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0821383434

Trade in services, far more than trade in goods, is affected by a variety of domestic regulations, ranging from qualification and licensing requirements in professional services to pro-competitive regulation in telecommunications services. Experience shows that the quality of regulation strongly influences the consequences of trade liberalization. WTO members have agreed that a central task in the ongoing services negotiations will be to develop a set of rules to ensure that domestic regulations support rather than impede trade liberalization. Since these rules are bound to have a profound impact on the evolution of policy, particularly in developing countries, it is important that they be conducive to economically rational policy-making. This book addresses two central questions: What impact can international trade rules on services have on the exercise of domestic regulatory sovereignty? And how can services negotiations be harnessed to promote and consolidate domestic policy reform across highly diverse sectors? The book, with contributions from several of the world's leading experts in the field, explores a range of rule-making challenges arising at this policy interface, in areas such as transparency, standards and the adoption of a necessity test for services trade. Contributions also provide an in-depth look at these issues in the key areas of accountancy, energy, finance, health, telecommunications and transportation services.

Opening Markets for Trade in Services

Opening Markets for Trade in Services
Author: Juan A. Marchetti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 785
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521516048

This volume of essays explores the state of services liberalization and the regulation of international trade in services.

WTO - Trade in Services

WTO - Trade in Services
Author: RĂ¼diger Wolfrum
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 816
Release: 2008-02-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 904742736X

With the establishment of the WTO, trade in services became part of the world trade order. Volume 6 is dedicated to these rather recent developments. It covers the core agreement, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) with annexes, as well as the additional instruments , which have been adopted later on to govern the liberalization in specific sectors. Those are the Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services, the Second Protocol on Financial Services, the Third Protocol on the Movement of Natural Persons, the Fourth Protocol on Basic Telecommunications and the Fifth Protocol, which contains further rules for financial services. This volume will be a valuable reference tool for the WTO community as a whole, as well as for professionals and researchers, who deal with one of the sectors concerned, e.g. financial services and telecommunications. Furthermore, it is highly relevant in view of those sectors, which are the subject of ongoing liberalization efforts or earmarked for future negotiations, namely accounting, legal services, transport, tourism, environmental services, legal and educational services.

The Prudential Carve-Out for Financial Services

The Prudential Carve-Out for Financial Services
Author: Carlo Maria Cantore
Publisher:
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2018-06-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108415768

Studies the GATS prudential carve-out as well as prudential carve-outs in preferential trade agreements.