The stakes were high in the financial services negotiations that were completed in December 1997 at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The developing countries were eager to strengthen and modernize their financial systems. The industrial countries sought access to important emerging markets in Latin America and Asia for their banking, insurance, brokerage, and other financial services firms. In the end, both sides agreed to bind unilateral and regional financial opening and reform that was already under way in many countries, industrial and developing alike. The authors assess the agreement reached in the WTO, identifying its shortcomings and suggesting ways that it can be bolstered in future negotiations. They analyze the impact of the agreement, and of the Asian financial crisis, on the state of liberalization and market opening in several important emerging-market economies--including a summary of the remaining obstacles to establishing efficient and open financial sectors. This book estimates the benefits of opening the financial sector to foreign competition. It assesses the macroeconomic benefits that flow from an improved financial sector and discusses the risks and costs involved in liberalization. The authors conclude with a blueprint for future efforts to liberalize financial services and emphasize that the recent financial services agreement represented only a beginning step in that process.

Innovative, interdisciplinary, practitioner-oriented insights into the key challenges faced in addressing the services trade liberalization and domestic regulation interface.

Trade in services, far more than trade in goods, is affected by a variety of domestic regulations, ranging from qualification and licensing requirements in professional services to pro-competitive regulation in telecommunications services. Experience shows that the quality of regulation strongly influences the consequences of trade liberalization. WTO members have agreed that a central task in the ongoing services negotiations will be to develop a set of rules to ensure that domestic regulations support rather than impede trade liberalization. Since these rules are bound to have a profound impact on the evolution of policy, particularly in developing countries, it is important that they be conducive to economically rational policy-making. This book addresses two central questions: What impact can international trade rules on services have on the exercise of domestic regulatory sovereignty? And how can services negotiations be harnessed to promote and consolidate domestic policy reform across highly diverse sectors? The book, with contributions from several of the world's leading experts in the field, explores a range of rule-making challenges arising at this policy interface, in areas such as transparency, standards and the adoption of a necessity test for services trade. Contributions also provide an in-depth look at these issues in the key areas of accountancy, energy, finance, health, telecommunications and transportation services.

This volume of essays explores the state of services liberalization and the regulation of international trade in services.

Studies the GATS prudential carve-out as well as prudential carve-outs in preferential trade agreements.

The internationalization of financial services is an important issue for the strengthening and liberalizing of financial systems in developing countries. There has been considerable support for the view that internationalization can assist countries

The World Trade Organisation plays the primary role in regulating international trade in goods, services and intellectual property. Traditionally, international trade law and regulation has been analysed primarily from the trade-in-goods perspective. Services are becoming an important competence for the WTO. The institutional, legal and regulatory influence of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) on domestic economic policymaking is attracting increasing attention in the academic and policymaking literature. The growing importance of services trade to the global economy makes the application of the GATS to trade in services an important concern of international economic policy. The GATS contains important innovations that build on the former GATT and existing WTO/GATT trade regime for goods. This book fills a void in the academic and policymaking literature by examining how the GATS governs international trade in services and its growing impact on the regulatory practice of WTO member states. It offers a unique discussion of the major is-sues confronting WTO member states by analysing the GATS and related international trade issues from a variety of perspectives that include law, political economy, regulation, and business. Moreover, the role of the WTO in promoting liberalised trade and economic development has come under serious strain because of the breakdown of the Doha Development Round negotiations. The book analyses the issues in the Doha services debate with some suggested policy approaches that might help build a more durable GATS framework. The book is a welcomed addition to the WTO literature and will serve as a point of reference for academics, policymakers andpractitioners.