Liberalizing International Trade in Services: The Case of Mercosur

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to measure how much Mercosur's member countries are open to international trade in services. Usually, barriers to trade in services are found under domestic laws or government regulations concerning certain services industries. Differently from goods, tariffs and quotas generally are not restraints to trade in services. This makes it difficult to assess the extent countries are open to trade in services. In order to solve this problem, a quantitative analysis of the Schedules of Commitments presented by the Mercosur's countries to the General Agreement on Trade in Services were made. The methodology developed by Hoekman (1995) was used to quantify the Specific Commitments. This made it possible to compare the openness of the four Mercosur's members countries to international trade in services. According to the results obtained, Argentina is the most liberal country. Brazil is the second most liberal country in Mercosur, followed by Uruguay. Paraguay has the lowest degree of openness to international trade in services among the four countries.