Pierre Sauvé and Martin Roy, Research Handbook on Trade in Services

Abstract

We are confronted today with new services and new forms of services trade that did not exist when, some thirty years ago, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) introduced services trade regulation at the multilateral level. Most prominently, traditional services trade regulation does not comprehensively deal with aspects of services trade related with the Internet, energy, automation, and more recently the emergence of the so-called sharing economy. While services contribute substantially to GDP per capita across the world, overall shares in global services trade remain unequally distributed between industrialised countries and the rest of the world. In conjunction with demographic considerations, aspects related to services trade such as the movement of natural service providers across nation borders or the role of services in fostering economic growth in developing countries increasingly gain attention. The most recent trade negotiations both at the plurilateral and at the regional or bilateral level aim to tackle some of the regulatory and economic aspects of services trade highlighted above. However, efforts are not based on multilateral consensus, whereas implications of a first mover advantage for other trade negotiations remain unclear. Therefore, the comprehensive Research Handbook on Trade in Services, edited by Pierre Sauve and Martin Roy, comes at a particularly interesting moment in the history of services trade regulation. It takes stock of the lessons learned to date and explores a range of policy questions. The multi-disciplinary perspectives on services trade combined in this Handbook offer insights into a wide array of critical aspects of services trade regulation today, and provide useful guidance for research priorities, and for new approaches to holistic services policies and negotiations.