Political Economy of Liberalization Commitments in Trade in Services

• In Event: Poster Session: International Political Economy 2 & APCG (African Politics)
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: International Political Economy 2

Abstract

The international economy is increasingly driven by cross-border services flows. Services liberalization has been the centerpiece of the WTO’s working agenda. Although multilateral attempts to reach agreements never cease, relatively few have succeeded. Even when governments do pursue an agreement, their commitments generally cover partial, but not all, sectors. Overall, international cooperation has produced grand visions about services liberalization, but has delivered liberalization only selectively. This phenomenon has persisted since the Uruguay Round, when the spotlight was first cast on trade in services, yet it rarely receives scholarly attention. Why have governments’ commitments to services liberalization been highly selective? This paper proposes a fresh, bottom-up perspective on the major challenge of today’s services trade. The arguments are tested on a unique dataset covering 23 EU countries plus Switzerland in 13 service sectors in the context of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). I first estimate multilevel models as the baseline, and then verify the results using machine learning algorithms. The paper enriches our understanding of domestic politics and international cooperation in services.

Author

• Kung-Chen Chen, University of Maryland