Cutting red tape for trade in services

Arbeitspapier

Trade in services is often hampered by domestic administrative barriers, even when countries are members of the same regional trade agreement. We exploit a large reform in the European Union (the EU Service Directive) targeted to reduce such administrative hurdles in cross-border service provision to estimate its effects on service trade. We employ a difference-in-difference strategy and a Pseudo Poisson Maximum Likelihood (PPML) panel approach to estimate gravity equations with multiple high-dimensional fixed effects. On average, the reform increased intra-EU trade in targeted services by about 40%. This effect of the reform on trade volume is corroborated by several robustness and placebo checks. Finally, a disaggregated analysis reveals significant differences between countries and service sectors.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Papers in Economics ; No. 2018-09

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations ; Empirical Studies of Trade ; Economic Integration
• Subject: Service trade ; trade liberalisation ; gravity equation

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Kern, Milena ; Paetzold, Jörg ; Winner, Hannes
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Salzburg, Department of Social Sciences and Economics
• (where): Salzburg
• (when): 2018

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/201677
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET