Revisiting the Trade Effects of Services Agreements

Abstract

The proliferation of services trade agreements and improved availability of data on bilateral services trade flows has resulted in a growing literature on the theoretical and empirical assessment of services trade effects. In this paper, we revisit the trade effects of services agreements using an updated database on bilateral services trade flows from the OECD and based on recent developments in the estimation of structural gravity models. Our results suggest a services trade effect of 13.7% at the intensive margin, with significantly higher estimates for intra-EU trade. However, the trade effect becomes weakly significant when the estimation includes zero trade flows. Incorporation of anticipation effects in the analyses accentuates the average treatment effect significantly (and monotonically with time) but only at the intensive margin.

Keywords: Services trade, PTAs, gravity model, endogeneity, anticipation effects

JEL Classification: F10, F14, F15