IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/wtowps/ersd201104.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fog in GATS commitments: Boon or bane?

Author

Listed:
  • Adlung, Rudolf
  • Morrison, Peter
  • Roy, Martin
  • Zhang, Weiwei

Abstract

The creation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), in the Uruguay Round, and its entry into force in 1995 marked a new stage in the history of the multilateral system. It was motivated essentially by the rapid expansion of international services trade within an increasingly open environment in many countries. Given the peculiarities of services trade, including the intangible nature of the products concerned and the need for direct contact between supplier and user in many cases, the Agreement contains a variety of conceptual innovations, including its extension to modes of supply beyond conventional cross-border trade (consumption abroad, commercial presence, and presence of natural persons) and its coverage, and legitimization, of various types of non-tariff restrictions. In turn, the new concepts needed time to be absorbed by the ministries and agencies involved in services trade. Further, the positive-list, or bottom-up, approach to scheduling trade commitments under the GATS meant that great flexibility was given to Members in selecting the sectors concerned and specifying the levels of access provided under individual modes. Thus, not surprisingly, the schedules that emerged from the Uruguay Round, which still account for the majority of current commitments, contain a variety of unclear or superfluous entries that may cause interpretation problems. Their solution could contribute significantly to the clarity and comparability of access obligations across sectors and WTO Members. The scheduling conventions agreed for the Doha Round thus provide specifically for the possibility of technical refinements that leave the substance of commitments unchanged. However, not only was this possibility used more sparingly to date than might have been expected, but additional flaws would be introduced if some current offers were to enter into effect. The following discussion, with a focus on a particular group of entries (market access via commercial presence), tries to explain the scope for such refinements and develop a clearer picture of the areas where further action might be needed.

Suggested Citation

  • Adlung, Rudolf & Morrison, Peter & Roy, Martin & Zhang, Weiwei, 2011. "Fog in GATS commitments: Boon or bane?," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2011-04, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wtowps:ersd201104
    DOI: 10.30875/5f920723-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/57579/1/655944931.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.30875/5f920723-en?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adlung, Rudolf & Molinuevo, Martin, 2008. "Bilateralism in services trade: is there fire behind the (BIT-)smoke?," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2008-01, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    2. Eric H. Leroux, 2007. "Eleven Years of GATS Case Law: What Have We Learned?," Journal of International Economic Law, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 749-793, December.
    3. Rudolf Adlung & Antonia Carzaniga, 2009. "MFN Exemptions Under the General Agreement on Trade in Services: Grandfathers Striving for Immortality?," Journal of International Economic Law, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(2), pages 357-392, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roy, Martin, 2011. "Services commitments in preferential trade agreements: An expanded dataset," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2011-18, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Adlung, Rudolf, 2009. "Trade in healthcare and health insurance services: The GATS as a supporting actor (?)," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2009-15, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    2. Adlung, Rudolf, 2009. "Services liberalization from a WTO/GATS perspective: In search of volunteers," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2009-05, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    3. Axel Berger & Matthias Busse & Peter Nunnenkamp & Martin Roy, 2013. "Do trade and investment agreements lead to more FDI? Accounting for key provisions inside the black box," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 247-275, June.
    4. Mattoo, Aaditya, 2011. "Services Trade Liberalization and Regulatory Reform: Re-invigorating International Cooperation," CEPR Discussion Papers 8181, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Mattoo, Aaditya & Subramanian, Arvind, 2008. "Multilateralism beyond Doha," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4735, The World Bank.
    6. Honeck, Dale, 2008. "LDC Poverty Alleviation and the Doha Development Agenda: is tourism being neglected?," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2008-03, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    7. Rammal, Hussain G. & Rose, Elizabeth L. & Ghauri, Pervez N. & Ørberg Jensen, Peter D. & Kipping, Matthias & Petersen, Bent & Scerri, Moira, 2022. "Economic nationalism and internationalization of services: Review and research agenda," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 57(3).
    8. Boie, Bertram., 2012. "Labour related provisions in international investment agreements," ILO Working Papers 994712903402676, International Labour Organization.
    9. Timilsina, Govinda R. & Shrestha, Ashish, 2008. "The growth of transport cector CO2 emissions and underlying factors in Latin America and the Caribbean," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4734, The World Bank.
    10. repec:ilo:ilowps:471290 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Adlung, Rudolf & Miroudot, Sébastien, 2012. "Poison in the wine? Tracing GATS-minus commitments in regional trade agreements," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2012-04, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    GATS; trade in services; schedules of commitments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F53 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations
    • F59 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - Other

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:wtowps:ersd201104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wtoerch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.