Essays in trade in services : difficulties and possibilities

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School of Business | Doctoral thesis (article-based) | Defence date: 2008-08-28
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Date

2008

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Kansantaloustiede
Economics

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en

Pages

116 s.

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Acta Universitatis oeconomicae Helsingiensis. A, 331

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the trade in services and examines it from different perspectives to improve the existing knowledge on the matter. Considering trade negotiations, the first two essays handle controversial issues, whereas the third papers's topic enhances countries to promote trade. In the first theoretical essay, we study liberalization of health services. By liberalization we mean removing restrictions on doctor mobility between two countries. Because of the nonexistence of a useful model, we also receive results from constructing a health service model. The results state that when the government is faced with a minimum treatment requirement, it is also efficient to provide patients a limited amount of treatment by the public sector. In a two-country model, with a minimum treatment requirement, liberalization of health services increases welfare only, if at least one of the countries has a very limited amount of doctors. In the second essay we use a computable general equilibrium model to first estimate tariff equivalent reactions to exogenous increases in trade in transport services. After that welfare gains from liberalization of these barriers are analyzed. Independent of the assumption how much transport services are increased, the largest decrease of tariff equivalents needed for the corresponding increases are in the sea and air transport services. Vice-versa, this means that liberalization of given tariff equivalents in the other transport service sectors leads to a higher increase in trade than liberalization in the sea and air transport sectors. Judgemental total liberalization of transport, finance, and business services shows a moderate increase in global welfare. In the last essay, we study empirically trade-related technology spillover effects. The existing literature has focused on spillover e¤ects through trade in goods and FDI-flows. This paper concentrates on services, and shows that spillover gains can be received also with trade in services. Our results show that service flows contribute to total factor productivity in both developed and developing countries. Especially in developing countries the effects of spillovers through services are comparable with spillovers through goods. We find no evidence for indirect spillover benefits through trade in services, but for goods the indirect effects are significant. Our results are consistent with trade theory, and with papers that analyze spillover effects through trade in goods

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Haaparanta, Pertti, professor

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https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-488-271-2

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[diss] Kauppakorkeakoulu / BIZ