Liberalizing Service Trade: Strategies for Success

A major success of the early post-war period was the negotiated reduction of barriers to international trade in commodities and manufactured goods, under the auspices of the GATT. The current challenge is to achieve a similar liberalization for trade in services - the sector which has overtaken manufacturing as the largest provider of jobs and growth in the advanced economies. The difficulties are legion. Data are scarce and definitions are contentious. There is no clear equivalent in servi...