Liberalising Labour Mobility Under the GATS

Liberalising Labour Mobility Under the GATS
Author: L. Alan Winters
Publisher: Commonwealth Secretariat
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780850927450

Multipleshift systems primarily aim to extend access and minimise unit costs. However, some systems only achieve these goals at the expense of educational quality. Policymakers may be faced by difficult choices in system design.

Trade and Migration Building Bridges for Global Labour Mobility

Trade and Migration Building Bridges for Global Labour Mobility
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2004-07-27
Genre:
ISBN: 9264016406

Expectations are running high for significant outcomes on the temporary movement of natural persons to supply services – known as mode 4 – in the current WTO services negotiations. This report considers the questions involved.

Moving People to Deliver Services

Moving People to Deliver Services
Author: Aaditya Mattoo
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 082135406X

This publication contains a number of papers presented at a conference organised by the World Bank and the WTO, held in April 2002, to discuss how international trade negotiations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) can promote greater liberalisation and labour mobility in the service sector in a way that benefits both home and host countries.

Coherence and Divergence in Services Trade Law

Coherence and Divergence in Services Trade Law
Author: Rhea Tamara Hoffmann
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2020-07-23
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3030469557

This book addresses topical questions concerning the legal framework of trade in services, and assesses how these issues are dealt with in GATS and in selected preferential trade agreements. In addition, the chapters discuss whether the differences and similarities (if any) are evidence of greater coherence or greater divergence. The book combines the individual analyses to provide a more comprehensive picture of the current law on services trade liberalisation.A quarter of a century after the conclusion of the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS), international law on trade in services is still in a state of flux: on the one hand, countries increasingly conclude bilateral and regional trade agreements with sections on trade in services that aim at a further liberalisation of services trade. On the other, the GATS structure remains the dominant model and serves as the basis for many preferential trade agreements. In addition, new aspects such as electronic commerce, data protection and taxation are now emerging, while issues that had already manifested in the mid-1990s such as financial services regulation, labour mobility, and telecommunications continue to be problematic. Usually, the debates focus on the question of whether preferential trade agreements serve as a stepping-stone or stumbling block for trade liberalisation at the multilateral level. However, it can be assumed that rules on trade in services in preferential trade agreements will coexist with the global GATS regime for the foreseeable future. This raises the question of whether we’re currently witnessing a drive towards greater coherence or more divergence in agreements on trade in services.

Liberalising Temporary Movement of Natural Persons

Liberalising Temporary Movement of Natural Persons
Author: L. Alan Winters
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre:
ISBN:

We discuss liberalising the temporary mobility of workers under Mode 4 of the GATS, particularly the movement of medium and low skilled service providers between developing and developed countries. Such mobility potentially offers huge returns: a flow equivalent to three per cent of developed countries' skilled and unskilled work forces would generate an estimated increase in world welfare of over US $150 billion, shared fairly equally between developing and developed countries. The larger part of this emanates from the less-skilled, essentially because losing higher-skilled workers cuts output in developing countries severely. The mass migration of less skilled workers raises fears in developed countries for cultural identity, problems of assimilation and the drain on the public purse. These fears are hardly relevant to temporary movement, however. The biggest economic concern from temporary mobility is its competitive challenge to local less skilled workers. But as populations age and the average levels of training and education rise, developed countries will face an increasing scarcity of less skilled labour. Temporary mobility thus actually offers a strong communality of interest between developing and developed countries. The remainder of the paper looks at the GATS provisions on Mode 4 and the commitments that have been made under it. The paper reviews several official proposals for the Doha talks, including the very detailed one from India, and considers several countries' existing schemes for the temporary movement of foreign workers. Many countries have long had bilateral foreign worker programs, and some regional agreements provide for liberal and flexible movement. These show what is feasible and how concerns can be overcome. We caution that, to be useful, any WTO agreement must increase mobility, not just bureaucratise it. The paper concludes with some modest and practical proposals. We suggest, inter alia, that licensing firms to arrange the movement of labour is the most promising short-term approach to increasing temporary mobility.

Liberalization of the Temporary Movement of Natural Persons and the Gulf Between Unskilled and Skilled Service Suppliers; Suggestions for Further Liberalization of Gats Mode 4

Liberalization of the Temporary Movement of Natural Persons and the Gulf Between Unskilled and Skilled Service Suppliers; Suggestions for Further Liberalization of Gats Mode 4
Author: Aaron A. Ostrovsky
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper seeks to explore the transboundary movement of labor, in connection with services provision and the World Trade Organization's (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). This paper seeks to explore how the further liberalization of trade in services, specifically the movement of natural persons, will be beneficial to skilled, unskilled and semi-skilled workers in developing countries. Large quantities of inexpensive unskilled labor has long been the comparative advantage of developing countries. However, it is not necessarily clear that the comparative advantage is maintained when that labor is sent abroad. While the GATS regime may be useful in solving some of the problems traditionally associated with the movement of skilled and semi-skilled labor from developing to developed countries, it cannot solve the problems associated with the movement of unskilled workers. Indeed, in some situations it would exacerbate those problems.

Let Their People Come

Let Their People Come
Author: Lant Pritchett
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2006-09-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1944691065

In Let Their People Come, Lant Pritchett discusses five "irresistible forces" of global labor migration, and the "immovable ideas" that form a political backlash against it. Increasing wage gaps, different demographic futures, "everything but labor" globalization, and the continued employment growth in low skilled, labor intensive industries all contribute to the forces compelling labor to migrate across national borders. Pritchett analyzes the fifth irresistible force of "ghosts and zombies," or the rapid and massive shifts in desired populations of countries, and says that this aspect has been neglected in the discussion of global labor mobility. Let Their People Come provides six policy recommendations for unskilled immigration policy that seek to reconcile the irresistible force of migration with the immovable ideas in rich countries that keep this force in check. In clear, accessible prose, this volume explores ways to regulate migration flows so that they are a benefit to both the global North and global South.

Moving People to Deliver Services

Moving People to Deliver Services
Author: Aaditya Mattoo
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2003-06-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0821383655

The WTO is today dealing with an issue that lies at the interface of two major challenges the world faces, trade liberalization and international migration. Greater freedom for the "temporary movement of individual service suppliers" is being negotiated under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Conditions in many developed economies - ranging from aging populations to shortages of skilled labor - suggest that this may be a propitious time to put labor mobility squarely on the negotiating agenda. Yet there is limited awareness of how the GATS mechanism can be used to foster liber.

Regionalism and the Multilateral Trading System

Regionalism and the Multilateral Trading System
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2003-07-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9264101373

Compares rule-making provisions in regional trade agreements with those of the WTO in ten specific areas: services, labour mobility, investment, competition policy, trade facilitation, government procurement, intellectual property rights, contingency protection, environment and rules of origin.