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Roy, Martin --- "Services commitments in preferential trade agreements: surveying the empirical landscape" [2014] ELECD 332; in Sauvé, Pierre; Shingal, Anirudh (eds), "The Preferential Liberalization of Trade in Services" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014) 15

Book Title: The Preferential Liberalization of Trade in Services

Editor(s): Sauvé, Pierre; Shingal, Anirudh

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781782548959

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Services commitments in preferential trade agreements: surveying the empirical landscape

Author(s): Roy, Martin

Number of pages: 22

Abstract/Description:

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on services have proliferated since 2000. This chapter briefly presents the expansion of the dataset initially developed in Marchetti and Roy (2008). The data permit us to assess the extent to which market access commitments undertaken by WTO Members in PTAs go beyond GATS commitments and offers made in the context of the Doha Development Agenda. From being a marginal phenomenon before 2000, preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on services have now become a central aspect of bilateral and regional trade agreements being negotiated outside the multilateral system. While only 5 services agreements involving 11 Members had been notified to the WTO before 2000, over 100 additional agreements have been notified since then, and various others are under negotiation and remain to be notified. As a result, most WTO Members are nowadays involved in at least one services PTA. Overall, while about two-thirds of the PTAs in force do not cover services, the majority of PTAs between developed and developing economies do contain services commitments. Moreover, since 2010, about half of all notifications under GATS Article V concern agreements involving solely developing Members. The purpose of this chapter is to briefly present the latest trends regarding the services market access commitments that Members have undertaken in PTAs. It is based on an expansion of the dataset developed in Marchetti and Roy (2008).