The Service Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic (STDC) Toolkit is part of a larger agenda of trade competitiveness work developed by the World Bank s International Trade Unit in recent years. Services are a key input in countries trade competitiveness, as well as a new source of trade diversification, making it critical to understand what factors and main constraints matter most for services competitiveness. The Toolkit provides a framework, guidelines, and set of practical tools to conduct a thorough analysis and diagnostic of trade competitiveness in the services sector with a methodology that sheds light on a country s ability both to export services and improve its export performance through policy change. This Toolkit is designed to be used in a modular way. Either a full country diagnostic can be undertaken or various parts of the toolkit can be used to address specific questions of interest, whether they pertain to existing services performance, the potential for expansion and growth in services trade, or policy options to increase competitiveness in services trade. The output of an STCD can be used to assess either the overall performance of a country s services sector or the performance of individual sub-sectors. This Toolkit complements the analytical framework for trade in goods provided by the Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic Toolkit (World Bank, 2012), and allows policymakers and experts in developing countries to better integrate services into their overall trade strategies. In addition, it will also be of interest to international organizations and development practitioners in both policymaking institutions and academia."

Unlike the movement of capital, the movement of labour across countries remains highly restricted - despite the huge global returns to international labour mobility. If the benefits of temporary labour mobility are so great, why is there not more movement? Progress appears to have been stymied not by the forum of negotiations but by the political sensitivity associated with even temporary labour mobility. To circumvent this problem, the use of bilateral labour agreements, which are generally not part of trade agreements, has been proposed as an alternative means of increasing temporary labour mobility. This book analyses the viability and performance of these agreements as a complement to other efforts to liberalise the temporary movement of people. It is based on the experiences of sending and receiving countries in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Although bilateral labour agreements are not designed to promote services exports by the sending country, they can be used to do so. Countries can design flexible strategies that combine both international trade and bilateral labour agreements. Trade agreements can provide rules and disciplines that grant market access for a wide range of activities. In contrast, bilateral labour agreements can allow countries, especially developing countries, to focus on the temporary movement of very specific categories of workers, such as computer programmers or electricians within the construction sector. The experiences of some Caribbean countries, the Pacific Islands countries, and the Philippines illustrate the importance of shared responsibility-at the design, implementation, and institutional levels. At the design level, sending and receiving countries need to agree on a set of objectives and align the design to meet them. At the implementation level, joint and cooperative management involving state and nonstate actors on both sides is required. At the institution-building level, needs must be jointly diagnosed, capacity constraints addressed, and, if possible, progress monitored and evaluated. Bilateral labour agreements can be an attractive option for middle-income countries whose migratory flows are relatively small and do not generate fears in receiving countries. Source country governments should make credible commitments to ensure the temporary nature of these flows. In conjunction with the private sector, they should establish mechanisms for selecting the sectors to promote in target markets.

"Regulatory Assessment Toolkit: A Practical Methodology for Assessing Regulation on Services Trade and Investment" provides guidance on how to assess and reform the regulatory policies of service trade industries. The toolkit can help government officials evaluate whether their regulatory framework addresses market failures, achieves public interest goals in an efficient manner, and promotes the development of an efficient domestic services market. Depending on the circumstances and the needs of the authorities, the toolkit can serve different purposes, including supporting regulatory reform, improving regulatory governance, negotiating and implementing trade agreements, and streamlining regulations to attract foreign investment.

The Regulatory Assessment Toolkit will be of particular interest to policy makers and government officials from regulatory bodies, experts at development banks and donor agencies, and academics and researchers in the field of economic regulation.

"Services are famously (and indeed on occasions literally) where the rubber of trade meets the road of a country's domestic economic conditions. Domestic regulation of services has a significant impact on the vibrancy of trade in services and simultaneously in trade in goods, since services such as telecommunications, transport, financial, and energy are inputs to the manufacturing process. Not surprisingly, domestic regulation of services faces steep technical, institutional, and political challenges, which are frequently not obvious either to the casual observer looking in from the outside or to the sectoral specialist steeped in the nitty gritty. That is why the Regulatory Assessment Toolkit is such a useful resource: It offers a sturdy framework for structured, unbiased, and exhaustive analysis of specific regulatory setups that will surely help put the diagnosis of regulatory challenges and the discussion of reform measures to improve efficiency on a sound basis. Efficiency of services, both domestic and imported, is key to an economy s overall competitiveness and to consumer welfare, both in developed and developing countries. The Regulatory Assessment Toolkit, together with similar initiatives, is a great tool to help direct and push much-needed reform in these sectors." -- Eduardo Perez Motta, AGON Law and Economics, former WTO Ambassador of Mexico, former Chairman of the International Competition Network (ICN) and former Chairman of the Federal Competition Commission of Mexico

"Services account for the largest share of economic activity in all countries and are a key determinant of trade competitiveness. This toolkit provides practical guidance for analysts seeking to document and assess the trade impacts of services policy regimes, as well as useful advice on alternative regulatory approaches that do not distort trade." --Bernard Hoekman, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute

"Services trade and investment flows are facilitated and constrained by a wide range of regulations-at the border and behind the border. Despite the growing importance of services in the world economy, understanding these different regulatory instruments and their impact on services flows remains very limited. There is limited awareness of what constitute best practices in services regulations, or about the institutional frameworks and regulatory architecture needed to promote the competitiveness of the services sector as well as the wider economy and to address larger public policy objectives. This book is most timely in that it not only fills these gaps in the existing literature on the globalization of services but also links this analysis to concrete policy inputs in the form of a toolkit. Academics, researchers, trade negotiators, and developing country policy officials will find this a most handy reference. " --Rupa Chanda, Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India "

This toolkit provides a novel approach and a set of tools that allow policymakers and analysts to identify non-tariff measures (NTMs), assess their trade restrictiveness and impact on prices and welfare, and to strengthen the institutional coordination mechanism, transparency, and regulatory governance on NTMs. It also aims at encouraging economies to increasingly address the NTM agenda from a domestic competitiveness and/or poverty perspective rather than from a mercantilist standpoint of concessions to trading partners. NTMs are policy measures, other than ordinary customs tariffs, that can potentially have an economic effect on international trade in goods, changing quantities traded, or prices or both. While most NTMs are already subject to WTO disciplines, the main challenge is to allow governments to address public policy concerns without unnecessarily hurting trade competitiveness and while preventing disguised protectionism. This toolkit is predicated on the idea that the complexity and diversity of NTMs should be recognized. Problems should be identified at the country level through consultations with the private sector, and technical solutions should be sought through careful analysis and private/public dialogue. The underlying philosophy is similar to what is known as "Regulatory Impact Assessment" (RIA), but applied to the review of existing measures (no ex ante analysis), in response to specific demands from countries struggling with legacies of complicated and penalizing regulations. Dealing with existing measures has the advantage of responding to an immediate need and focusing on measures whose effects are known. The toolkit is organized as follows. Chapter 1 discusses the newly revamped NTM classification and pervasiveness of NTM. Chapter 2 elaborates on the analytics of an NTM review, walking the reader step by step through the key questions. Chapter 3 focuses on the institutional set up and key principles to successfully pursue the streamlining of regulations. Finally, chapters 4 and 5 provide some practical cases of streamlining both at the country and regional levels, and for product specific examples.

"The past two decades have seen exciting changes with developing countries emerging as exporters of services. Technological developments now make it easier to trade services across borders. But other avenues are being exploited: tourists visit not just to sightsee but also to be treated and educated, service providers move abroad under innovative new schemes, and some developing countries defy traditional notions by investing abroad in services. "Exporting Services: A Developing Country Perspective" takes a brave approach, combining exploratory econometric analysis with detailed case studies of representative countries: Brazil, Chile, the Arab Republic of Egypt, India, Kenya, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Two questions lead the analysis: How did these developing countries succeed in exporting services? What policy mix was successful and what strategies did not deliver the expected results? The analysis evaluates the role of three sets of factors: First, the fundamentals, which include a country's factor endowments, infrastructure, and institutional quality; second, policies affecting trade, investment, and labor mobility in services; and third, proactive policies in services designed to promote exports or investment. The case studies illustrate the complex nature of reforms and policy making in the service sector as well as the benefits of well-implemented reforms. Although success seems to be explained by a set of conditions that are difficult to replicate, common features can also be identified. Several countries have adopted policies to support exports, especially exports of information technology-related services. This resource will be valuable for policy makers, experts, and academics who are engaged in efforts to reform service and investment policies in their own country."

This book aims at contributing to address some of the challenge that developing countries, especially the least-developing countries, face in the design of trade in service policies and to provide governments with tools to better incorporate services in their export strategies, including negotiations and cooperation with trading partners, and unilateral reforms. This book helps to identify key policy challenges faced by developing country trade negotiators, regulatory policy officials and/or service suppliers. Management of both policy reforms and trade agreements requires investments in sounder regulatory regimes and the establishment of enforcement mechanisms to help countries gradually opening and mitigate any potential downside risks. A successful strategy requires a proper sequencing that through an orderly and transparent process allows to prepare for greater competition. Developing countries face serious resource and administrative constraints to adequately negotiate multiple services agreements that serve their trade interest. For many developing countries, the administrative burden of handling and negotiating multiple trade agreements has become a serious concern and this can hamper their opportunities to obtain adequate market access for their services exports. The book develops in detail the methodological framework for the construction of a database and the core elements that will comprise it, to help countries to organize and manage their services commitments. Little attention has been devoted to the organization/preparation and the development, assessment and conclusion of the negotiation process. The book presents a simulation exercise designed for policymakers, trade negotiators, and trade practitioners working in the area of services. This exercise will help them to better understand the preparatory and negotiating stages of the process leading to liberalization of trade in services.

Recognizing that services affect the ability of countries and their firms to compete on international markets, the World Bank's Trade and Regional Integration Unit has developed an extensive work program to promote the performance of countries' domestic services sectors, including services trade. Services for Trade Competitiveness presents selected applications of new methodologies that were developed to assess the competitiveness of countries' services sectors, discern the types of barriers to services that exist in the regulatory environment, and identify the resulting policy implications. Its assessments are designed for a wide audience, including policy makers in developing countries and development practitioners in international organizations, policy-making institutions, and academia. The purpose of this book is to help developing countries make informed policy choices to increase their chances of benefiting from the increasing prominence of services in international trade