The Impact of Restrictions in Trade in the Telecommunications: an Application to Middle East and North African Countries

Thierry Montalieu () and Isabelle Rabaud ()
Additional contact information
Thierry Montalieu: LEO - Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [UMR7322] - UO - Université d'Orléans - UT - Université de Tours - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Theoretically, welfare gains from liberalisation of trade in services arise from falling prices and technology transfers from foreign firms. Empirically, due to the role of the regulatory framework in barriers to trade in services ('behind-the-border' laws) substantial gains are only reached when entry of foreign firms is widened. We have a close look at the way impediments to trade in services affect cost-price margin in telecommunication in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. First, we criticise the measurements of barriers in trade in services, which tend towards an overestimation. Second, we show that analyses bend to overvalue the impact of regulations on the cost-price margin in telecommunications for MENA countries, in line with inadequate econometric techniques or underestimation of the effect of technical progress. Therefore, the best way in terms of trade in services liberalisation is to opt for a flexible, qualitative interpretation of the quantitative results and rank ordering of countries.

Keywords: Trade restrictions; Commercial presence; Liberalisation of trade in services; Telecommunications; MENA countries; Restrictions à l'échange; Présence commerciale; Libéralisation des échanges de services; Pays du Sud et de l'Est de la Méditerranée (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-07-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara and nep-int
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00827761
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00827761/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Restrictions in Trade in the Telecommunications: an Application to Middle East and North African Countries (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00827761

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().