Why do Countries enter into Preferential Agreements on Trade in Services? Assessing the Potential for Negotiated Regulatory Convergence in Asian Services Markets

Pierre Sauvé () and Anirudh Shingal
Additional contact information
Pierre Sauvé: World Trade Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland

No 129, Working Papers on Regional Economic Integration from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: More than half of the World Trade Organization (WTO)-notified services trade agreements (STAs) in effect since 2008 have involved at least one (South or Southeast) Asian trading partner. Drawing on Baier and Bergstrand’s (2004) determinants of preferential trade agreements and using the World Bank’s database on the restrictiveness of domestic services regimes (Borchert et.al. 2012), we examine the potential for negotiated regulatory convergence in Asian services markets. Our results suggest that countries within Asia that are more remote from the rest of the world and that have similar economic sizes, greater differences in relative factor endowments compared to the rest of the world, common legal origins, high levels of preexisting trade, and restrictive services regulations are more likely candidates for regulatory convergence. Our empirical model successfully predicts 10 of the 14 STAs negotiated during 2008–12 and 88 of the 89 dyads within Asia that lack an STA.

Keywords: PTAs; services; regulation; regulatory convergence; Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F13 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2014-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-reg and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://aric.adb.org/pdf/workingpaper/WP129_Sauve_S ... ntial_Agreements.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Why do Countries Enter into Preferential Agreements on Trade in Services? Assessing the Potential for Negotiated Regulatory Convergence in Asian Services Markets (2016)
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:ris:adbrei:0129

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers on Regional Economic Integration from Asian Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivan B. de Leon ().