Services Liberalization Research Articles

The liberalization of air services: prospects and challenges for the Indian economy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine, with a specific reference to the Indian economy, the interface between the World Trade Organization (WTO)/General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) disciplines and aviation services; the challenges to the incorporation of air services regimes into the world trade treaty; and the alternative routes for the liberalization of air services markets. Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts the doctrinal approach to legal research in analyzing literature on the integration of air services into the multi-lateral trading system. The paper takes a critical look at the current state of the aviation industry, the rationales and routes for liberalization, as well as the challenges facing it. Findings – The paper reveals the state of the Indian aviation market and its preparedness for integration into the global market system. The merit of a gradual approach is examined. Research limitations/implications – The WTO framework offers the traditional route for the liberalization of trade. However, since the inception of air travel, air traffic rights have been traded between countries on a bilateral basis, involving concepts of sovereignty over national airspace. The paper offers some ideas on how the two can be integrated. Originality/value – The research draws on recent events in the Indian aviation sector. It is of importance, especially to other emerging economies with similar social-economic indicators. It objectively questions the rationales for liberalization or globalization and its merits.

Impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on the Legal Framework for Public Services in Europe

The study evaluates the potential effects of TTIP on public services. Section II we provides a general overview of the basis of TTIP and its current state. The paper then examines the EU’s legal basis with regard to the negotiation of free trade agreements concerning public services (Section III). Section IV presents an analytical model which can be used to evaluate the effects of service liberalisation obligations in free trade agreements on public services. This model is then applied to the TTIP negotiations and the currently known state of negotiations in the area of service liberalisation (Section V). The following sections examine what effects the planned TTIP chapter on public procurement, competition and energy could have on public services and what special features may arise in connection with the planned chapter on investment protection for public services.

The public sector and equality

After years of neglect, inequality is back on the political agenda. The International Labour Organization has proposed the introduction of so-called social protection floors to tackle poverty in the age of globalization. However, little attention has been paid to the role of the public sector for limiting inequality. This is surprising in the light that new research shows the positive impact of public services such as health care and education for improving or maintaining equality. In some countries, access to public services is even more important in terms of redistribution than taxes and social benefits. Yet while the public sector hardly plays a role in discussions on equality, equality is mostly absent in the debates on public sector reforms. Here the main focus of the discussion is efficiency. The purpose of this article is twofold: on the one hand, it introduces the public sector as a major factor into the debates about inequality; on the other, it sheds light on the consequences of privatization, liberalization, and marketization of public services for equality.

Services Liberalization and Wage Inequality in the Philippines

This paper examines the impact on employment and wages of liberalization in selected services subsectors (banking, distribution, and telecommunications) in the Philippines from 1991 to 2004. On the assumption that value-added effects arise from service liberalization that subsequently increase productivity in other sectors and influence changes in average wages across industries, results indicate that liberalization may have potentially harmed more vulnerable populations that are less educated, and created greater opportunities for employment in good jobs for higher-skilled males relative to females. This suggests the need for policies to support education, as the Philippine economic structure shifts away from primary and secondary sector production, which typically requires a higher skilled and more educated labor force. Greater disaggregation of the data along the lines of gender, education, occupation, and employment status highlights the usefulness of careful policy analysis in designing programs to redress distributional imbalances that accompany liberalization and structural transformation.

New Generation Trade Treaties — The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 28 Volume 22 Issue 3 2015 were made to ILO Conventions, reaffirming workers ’ rights, that nothing in the agreement could bind corporations and secure enforcement of rights, and nothing was included to protect collective agreements. Finally he argued that CETA and TTIP, if agreed, would provide the opportunity for corporations to challenge differences between employment law regimes of EU member states, undermining the basis for social Europe and facilitating the race to the bottom. A north American perspective on trade agreements was provided by Ben Davies (USW). He outlined some of the differences between EU and US standards and how, in the area of chemicals, TTIP could lead to the undermining of the EU’s precautionary principle (where chemicals must not be used until evidence indicates they are safe). He provided evidence of the difficulties of using ILO conventions within free trade agreements (not least due to their low level of ratification in the US) and how the US state has not responded to the assassination of trade unionists in Guatemala, despite complaints filed under the bilateral trade agreement over 7 years ago. Despite the challenges , the USW continued to campaign and lobby actively against these new generation trade agreements and stressed the importance of building support against TTIP and CETA from among the European trade union movement. Discussions surrounding the position in Europe included contributions from Penny Clarke (EPSU) who stressed the federation’s opposition to ISDS and the liberalisation of public services, Steve French (Keele University) who examined the TTIP negotiations in the light of the proposed referendum on EU membership in the UK and Ben Richards (Unite) who examined the issues in building support across European trade unions to oppose free trade agreements. He highlighted the contrasting positions of CO Industri (Denmark) and CGT-FTM (France) within IndustriALL-Europe and how agreement was being forged around key principles which had to be applied in any new generation agreement. The final speaker was Labour MEP, Judith Kirton-Darling, who stressed the opportunity that the new generation trade agreements might play in re-regulating international trade, and the role of Labour MEPs within the social democratic bloc within the European Parliament in trying to secure opposition to TTIP if it did not exclude ISDS, public services and secure binding labour rights. She highlighted the difficulties in building a coalition to oppose TTIP in the Parliament, and the difficulties in gaining access to information about the treaty. In summary, the seminar was an excellent event to promote debate and understanding around the complex and apparently remote topic of international trade agreements for many trade unionists. to be added T his is a brief report of a three-day seminar organised by Unite the union in July 2015, focusing upon the growth of free trade agreements and trade union responses. Opening the seminar Adrian Weir (Assistant Chief of Staff, Unite) placed the seminar into context, outlining how Unite had adopted a position of opposing TTIP in in its entirety at its policy conference in July 2014 and how this position had been adopted in relation to the proposed TTIP, CETA, TPP and TISA trade agreements at the 2014 TUC Congress. Finally, the steering group of Workers Uniting (Unite-USW partnership) had committed to full opposition to these new trade agreements. The seminar was then addressed by Peter Rossman (IUF) who outlined how the development of the new generation trade agreements, starting with NAFTA in 1994, was little to do with removing trade barriers, and focused upon protecting the investment rights of transnational corporations . One example was the attempt to extend trade deals to services, affecting those services associated with manufacturing as well as public services traditionally supplied by the state. Crucially, one aim of the new agreements was to apply a principle of ‘negative listing’, so that governments could only exclude services from a trade agreement at the time of signature, meaning that returning these to the public sector and excluding new emergent sectors would become impossible, locking in privatisation. This would be secured through Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses in agreements which allowed corporations to take governments to secret courts for loss, or even the...

Ideological trends in initial teacher education curricula: the case of East African universities

This paper reviews the ideological trends in initial teacher education curricula in East African universities during the post-independent and contemporary times. From the mid-1960s and mid-1980s, initial teacher education curricula were integrated and harmonised with support from the East African Community whose efforts were coordinated by the Inter-University Council for East Africa. With the breakup of the Community in 1977, each independent state pursued its own educational strategy. However, underfunding of the public sector by governments, introduction of market-friendly reforms under the World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme in 1987 and the de-regularisation policies led to the liberalisation of public services, including education. Liberalisation affected among others, the quality of the initial teacher education curricula. Consequently, national councils and commissions for higher education were established to control standards in higher education, and the Inter-University Council for East Africa was revived to standardise and harmonise educational standards at regional level. The review shows that over the past five decades, the structure and organisation of initial teacher education curricula has continuously adjusted itself and been adjusted to a hybrid culture blending classical humanism, utilitarianism, social re-constructionism, market and global ideologies. Comparable ideological inclinations at socio-economic and political levels have influenced this trend in the region. The paper highlights the implications of such trends on the future of initial teacher education in the region.

Services liberalization and productivity of manufacturing firms

AbstractEmploying a unique database of Ukrainian firms in 2001–07, we use the external push for liberalization in the services sector as a source of exogenous variation to identify the effect of services liberalization on total factor productivity (TFP) of manufacturing firms. The results indicate that a standard deviation increase in services liberalization within a firm is associated with a 9.2 percent increase in TFP. The effect is stronger for firms with high productivity, bringing about a reallocation of resources within an industry. Industry‐level results show that the effect of reallocation on industry productivity is almost as strong as the within‐firm effect. The dynamic interaction of services liberalization and TFP through the investment channel reinforces the effect. The effect is robust to different estimation methods and to different sub‐samples of the data. In particular, it is more pronounced for domestic and small firms.

Addressing the trade-climate change-energy nexus: China's explorations in a global governance landscape

We have arrived at a critical juncture when it comes to understanding the numerous ways in which trade interacts with climate change and energy (trade-climate-energy nexus). Trade remains crucial for the sustainable development of the world's greatest trading nation: China. After clarifying the linkages within the trade, climate change and energy nexus, this article delves into China's specific needs and interests related to trade, climate change and energy. Then it explores the ways in which trade can contribute to China's needs, to sustainable energy development and to the goals of the global climate agreement that is under negotiation.One main findings are China is a key participant in negotiations on trade liberalization of environmental technologies and services. These negotiations are in China's interests in terms of innovative industries, technological upgrading, employment and public health. China could stand up for the interests of other emerging and developing countries and serve as an example in terms of transitioning to a low-carbon economy. Beyond trade barriers issues of domestic (energy) regulation such as fossil-fuel subsidies as well as investment, competition-policy, trade-facilitation and transit issues related to clean energy need to be addressed.Building trust between relevant actors across sectors and national borders will be of the essence in order to foster long-term cooperation on technological innovation.As a way forward, different approaches towards the governance of trade and climate change will be highlighted. Besides discussing the specific aspects of Chinese participation in global trade and climate change governance, this paper aims at offering broader insights into the nexus between trade, energy and climate governance in China.

"Green Trade Protectionism": An Analysis of Three New Issues that Affect Developing Countries

The environment is increasingly being used to justify protectionist measures that enjoy greater social legitimacy. Over the last few years, new issues have emerged in relation to this, and three of them are analysed in this paper: green growth and green economy, climate change response measures, and the liberalization of environmental goods and services. These new issues are being used both to apply barriers to goods and services coming from developing countries and to improve the market access of developed countries' exports of industrial products. All this amounts to "green protectionism" which is aimed at improving the trade balance of developed countries, particularly in relation to developing countries. In the many fora where these topics are being discussed, Argentina states that these issues should neither result in green protectionism nor encourage policies that constitute disguised restrictions on international trade, which is inconsistent with the multilateral trading system and with international environmental law, and in particular with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

The Effects of Liberalization Policies on Price and Quality of Services in the European Union Postal Market

This study examines the effects of postal services liberalization and postal market characteristics such as productivity and population density on sector performance indicators of price and quality of service for the EU-27 countries. The EU-27 countries are classified into two groups according to the existence of legal monopoly: high degree and low degree of market opening countries. The results, based on a cross-section country level data belonging to the EU-27 countries for the year 2010, indicate that there is not a statistically significant relationship between the degree of legal openness in the market and performance indicators of price and quality of service. Our analyses show that labour productivity is a key factor which has a statistically significant negative impact on prices and positive impact on quality of services.

Are government veterinary paraprofessionals serving the poor? The perceptions of smallholder livestock farmers in Western Kenya.

The liberalization of clinical veterinary services in Kenya introduced new service providers into the animal health service sector. This study examines the perceptions of livestock farmers regarding these service providers and analyses the factors that influence their choice of alternative service providers in Kakamega County. The empirical analysis shows that private animal health assistants were perceived to provide better services than alternative providers because they are more accessible and offer services on credit. Results from a multinomial logit model reveal that more educated, wealthier, and older farmers are more likely to use government services. The study concludes that it is imperative to better target the poor and to integrate private service providers into government animal health programs.

Tomorrow's Lawyers

MY original motivation in writing my latest book, Tomorrow's Lawyers, was to provide young and aspiring lawyers with some sense of what the future might hold. When I studied law in the late 1970s and early 1980s, my fellow students and I did not anticipate major upheaval in the legal world. We expected law firms to grow but we did not anticipate major changes in the way in which lawyers would advise their clients or in the manner in which our courts would operate. In contrast, looking 30 years ahead, I think it unimaginable that our legal systems will not undergo vast change. I say this because I believe there to be three drivers of change that will combine to transform the legal landscape, radically and internationally. My first driver of change is growing cost pressures on lawyers. I call this the for challenge--how can we deliver more legal service at less cost? This challenge is relevant for all clients, from general counsel in the world's largest corporations through to individual consumers. In these dismal economic times, the drive towards lower cost service is relentless. The second pressure will flow from the liberalization of legal services and, in particular, from allowing non-lawyers to compete in the legal marketplace. Although this liberalization is restricted today to a small number of countries, I predict that its global impact will be profound and many other jurisdictions will follow suit before too long. The third is information technology and especially the Internet. Technology is transforming the social and economics lives of us all. I see no reason that lawyers and courts should be immune from its reach. Crucially, though, the systems that are likely to exert greatest impact are technologies. This means that they will not support, sustain, and enhance the way that lawyers and law firms have worked in the past. Instead, these technologies--such as online dispute resolution and intelligent search--will fundamentally challenge and change legal work. In combination, then, the for challenge, liberalization, and disruptive technologies are set to bring greater change in law over the next two decades than we have seen in the last two centuries. Or so I claim. Accordingly, I think it important that young people who are planning to enter our profession are exposed to some thinking about the ways in which their careers might unfold. The future of law, I say, will be neither Grisham nor Rumpole. Rather, it will be virtual courts, diagnostic expert systems, commoditization, alternative sourcing, internet-based global legal businesses, web-based simulated practice, and much more. What I try to do in the book, therefore, is to explain how and why there will be radical changes in the legal market, and what this means for law firms, for in-house counsel, for the courts and judges, and for consumers of legal services. I also try to offer practical guidance for young lawyers--on what new legal jobs there are likely to be, who will be employers of lawyers in the future, and what our law schools should be thinking and doing about the future. Although the book was conceived as an introduction to the future for tomorrow's lawyers, when I asked various clients and colleagues to read early drafts, many said that it is also a useful primer for more seasoned practitioners. In the words that follow, I discuss three topics that are central to the book and, I hope, of interested to lawyers everywhere--decomposing and alternative sourcing, liberalization, and legal education. I. Decomposing and Alternative Sourcing Over ten years ago, I came up with an idea that has gradually gained traction in the legal world--that we can look at the delivery of legal work as a form of production process, and one to which we can bring all manner of new efficiencies. Legal matters such as deals and disputes, I claim, are not indivisible professional engagements that must all be sourced and delivered in one way (conventionally by an attorney in a law firm). …

Assessment of the association of health with the liberalisation of trade in services under the World Trade Organisation.

BackgroundThe liberalisation of trade in services which began in 1995 under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has generated arguments for and against its potential health effects. Our goal was to explore the relationship between the liberalisation of services under the GATS and three health indicators - life expectancy (LE), under-5 mortality (U5M) and maternal mortality (MM) - since the WTO was established.Methods and FindingsThis was a cross-sectional ecological study that explored the association in 2010 and 1995 between liberalisation and health (LE, U5M and MM), and between liberalisation and progress in health in the period 1995–2010, considering variables related to economic and social policies such as per capita income (GDP pc), public expenditure on health (PEH), and income inequality (Gini index). The units of observation and analysis were WTO member countries with data available for 2010 (n = 116), 1995 (n = 114) and 1995–2010 (n = 114). We conducted bivariate and multivariate linear regression analyses adjusted for GDP pc, Gini and PEH. Increased global liberalisation in services under the WTO was associated with better health in 2010 (U5M: −0.358 p<0.001; MM: −0.338 p = 0.001; LE: 0.247 p = 0.008) and in 1995, after adjusting for economic and social policy variables. For the period 1995–2010, progress in health was associated with income equality, PEH and per capita income. No association was found with global liberalisation in services.ConclusionsThe favourable association in 2010 between health and liberalisation in services under the WTO seems to reflect a pre-WTO association observed in the 1995 data. However, this liberalisation did not appear as a factor associated with progress in health during 1995–2010. Income equality, health expenditure and per capita income were more powerful determinants of the health of populations.

CHOICE AND EQUALITY: ARE VULNERABLE CITIZENS WORSE OFF AFTER LIBERALIZATION REFORMS?

In recent decades, we have witnessed a massive restructuring of public service delivery mechanisms, including service liberalization reforms, the pursuit of the choice agenda, and the creation of quasi‐markets. A central aim of these reforms was that citizens should receive better value for money through greater competition among service providers. However, it is debated whether all layers of society are equally able to benefit from these developments. We assess the equality in citizens' choice behaviour with regard to liberalized services of general interest across 25 countries of the European Union. Our findings show that the gap between less and better educated service users, in terms of actual switching behaviour, widens once a considerable degree of service liberalization, as evidenced by the number of service providers, has been achieved. However, this has been found only in the mobile telephony sector and not in the less competitive market of fixed telephony services.

Trade in Legal Services Liberalization in Asia-Pacific FTAs: Assessing the Convergence of ASEAN Rules

The article examines the liberalization of trade in legal services in the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its reform prospects to meet the challenges of multi-jurisdictional practice. It argues that while the ten-country bloc pledges to progressively liberalize the legal sector, ASEAN commitments under free trade agreements (FTAs) constitute merely paper commitments. To achieve the goal of the ASEAN Economic Community to form a single market and production base, a feasible, incremental roadmap is imperative to integrate the legal services market. The article first analyzes the economic impact of foreign law firms on ASEAN’s legal capacity building and the evolution of emerging ASEAN law. By assessing legal services negotiations under the World Trade Organization, the European Union, and Asian FTAs, the article identifies issues of complexity in international arenas. The Singapore experiment further explores the effectiveness of FTAs with Australia and the United States and self-initiated FTA-plus measures such as Joint Law Ventures and Qualifying Foreign Law Practices. These case studies, along with law firms’ operations vis-a-vis regulatory changes, demonstrate the best practices. Finally, the article provides reform proposals that will accelerate the integration of ASEAN’s legal services market and enhance its competiveness under the multilateral trading system.

Barriers to Trade in Environmental Goods and Environmental Services: How Important are They? How Much Progress at Reducing Them?

Barriers to trade in Environmental Goods (EGs) and Environmental Services (ESs) are documented for a large sample of countries and compared with barriers to trade in other goods and other services. Some progress at reduction in barriers has occurred at the national, regional and sectoral levels but not at the multilateral level, where countries have been unable to agree on an approach to reduce barriers to trade. For EGs, tariffs and NTBs are highest for low-income countries and low for high-income countries. First-order estimates of the import response to a 50% reduction in tariffs for low-income countries suggest an increase in imports of around 4%. For ESs, estimates draw on the comparison of an Environment Services Liberalization index calculated across modes and services sub-sectors. The limitations of this ordinal index coupled with the inadequacy of the UN CPC list where services are defined in an exclusionary manner so that they cannot appear on two lists, casts greater uncertainty as to the informational content of the commitment measures presented here which, at best, indicate bindings on market access and national treatment rather than actual policies. It would appear nonetheless that at least as great, and probably greater commitments took place in the environmental sectors (as defined by the CPC) both multilaterally and regionally than for ‘other’ services with the same pattern across income groups: greater commitments observed for HIC than for MICs and LICs although it is widely recognized that GATS commitments by HICs largely amounted to consolidated members’ unilateral services policies. North-South Regional Trade Agreements resulted mostly in commitments by the Southern partners indicating greater prospects for reducing barriers to trade in a regional than in a multilateral context.

Trade Agreements and Legal Services: An Anatomy of the GATS and Preferential Trade Arrangements

There is little doubt that the past two decades have seen an extraordinary advance in the globalization of the world's economies. In this context, the legal services play a crucial role in facilitating business and form a vital part of the infrastructure that underpins world commerce. As a result, this service sector has experienced continuous growth over the last ten years. However, the regulation of legal services in most jurisdictions did not follow the same evolution, which results in restrictions on cross-border legal practice. Yet economic growth and globalization of economies increasingly require the adaptation of the regulation of legal services. In most instances they take place in the context of trade agreements. Until recently to the exception of the EU and the NAFTA, the liberalization of trade in services took place within the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). However, the last decade has seen a proliferation of Preferential Trade Agreement (PTAs), which contain liberalization of trade services, including legal services. Such evolution leads to the coexistence of the GATS and the PTAs. The objective of this article is to analyse the interaction of these agreements in the context of the liberalization of trade in legal services using four principles of trade liberalization: the transparency; the nondiscrimination; the avoidance of unnecessary restrictions; the recognition.

How to Design Trade Agreements in Services: Top Down or Bottom-Up?

This article deals with claims, recently raised in various circles, that structural faults in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) have prevented WTO Members from advancing services liberalization under the Agreement. The GATS is generally associated in this context with a bottom-up (positive-list) scheduling approach where the sectors on which trade commitments are undertaken are selected individually. This is claimed to be less efficient, in terms of liberalization effects, than alternative approaches under which everything is considered to be fully committed unless specifically excluded (top-down or negative listing). However, a closer look at services negotiations conducted in various settings, including the Doha Round process, WTO accession cases and different types of Regional Trade Agreements (RTA), suggests that such structural issues have limited, if any, impact on the results achieved. What ultimately matters are not negotiating or scheduling techniques, but the political impetus that the governments concerned are ready to generate.

KOMPARÁCIA PROCESOV LIBERALIZÁCIE LETECKEJ DOPRAVY NA VNÚTORNÝCH TRHOCH EÚ A USA

The paper focuses on liberalization of air transportation services in the European Union and USA. After analyzing historical developments and current situation on the markets we proceed to identify main similarities and differences between liberalization paths in respective regions. We come to the conclusion that liberalization in the EU is on the higher level than in the USA. Having achieved sufficient level of liberalization, regulators in both EU and USA now concentrate on strengthening air passenger rights. We expect that the biggest obstacles for further liberalization will continue to be composed of a mix of economic and military security concerns and social security of air transportation sector employees.

The impact of Air Service Agreement liberalisation: The case of Nigeria

The positive impact of air transport liberalisation as suggested by economic theories and empirical studies has inspired many developing countries like Nigeria to liberalise some of its Air Service Agreements (ASAs). This paper seeks to examine the extent to which international air service liberalisation has impacted upon Nigeria ten years after it was introduced. The research developed a cross-sectional model with passenger traffic as the dependent variable, while macroeconomic factors (trade and GDP), historical links, distance and ASAs (a proxy for liberalisation) served as independent or predictor variables. The analysis revealed a set of ASA stages in the country's policy-making process (restricted Bilateral Air Service Agreement, Open Skies Agreement and Yamoussoukro Declaration). Further analysis showed that the predictor variables were all significant in explaining passenger demand. The model demonstrated that the liberalisation of market access to the Open Skies Agreement level could stimulate traffic growth by at least 65 percent. The findings can assist in guiding policy and industry stakeholders in future decisions relating to liberalisation and ASAs.