Liberalización de servicios y su incorporación en la industria manufacturera

One of the most important phenomena of economic development in recent decades has been the services sector growth, which today represents the main economic sector worldwide, as well as a growing share of international trade. Among the causes that explain this growth is the trade opening to which they have been subject. However, due to the nature of barriers to trade in services and therefore the way in which their commitments are established, the analysis of the impact of trade negotiations on the incorporation of services in the domestic industry has not been profound. This article seeks, through the use of a new database that quantifies the liberalization achieved in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), to analyze its impact on the penetration of imported services within the manufacturing industry. Using data from the World Input-Product Database (WIOD) for 43 countries in the period 2000-2014, we managed to establish that the integration of imported services into the domestic industry is positively correlated with the level of openness recorded in the GATS.