Quantifying Services-Trade Liberalization: The Impact of Binding Commitments

It has long been established in theory that uncertainty impacts on firm behaviour. However, the empirical basis for quantifying the uncertainty-reducing effects of trade agreements has not been firmly established. In this paper, we develop estimates of the effect of reducing uncertainty regarding market access on cross-border services trade by making commitments that are bound under a trade agreement. Specifically, we identify the effect of services trade restrictions on cross-border services trade, as measured by the OECD’s Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI), and the separate effect of “water” in countries’ WTO bindings, as assessed by the difference between their commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services and their applied level of market access, as captured by their STRI scores. Using a gravity model, we find that services trade responds positively but inelastically to reductions in services trade barriers, as measured by the STRI, and that the response to actual restrictions is about twice as strong as the response to comparable reductions in uncertainty, as measured by water. Responses are highly heterogeneous across services sectors. We suggest how these results can be used provisionally to quantitatively assess the impact of trade agreements in CGE modelling frameworks, taking into account not only actual liberalization of market access terms and conditions, but also the extent of binding of those commitments.