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The Global Forum website tries to keep track of the ever changing landscape of trade analysis, measurement of trade and trade statistics. The site keeps a database of links to over 150 relevant publications, reports, articles and speeches.

ALL AVAILABLE PUBLICATIONS

The full list of featured publications can be found HERE.

Publications

21st Meeting of the Wiesbaden Group on Business Registers

International Roundtable on Business Survey Frames
Andreas Lindner Florian Eberth 2008

n the context of globalization, one of the main challenging development areas for external trade statistics is to link them more closely to other statistics. The linkage of trade statistics with business statistics allows to measure, on the one hand, the contribution of real economic sectors to trading, and on the other hand, to complement business data with detailed information on trade, which is traditionally not part of business statistics... more »

A Sorted Tale of Globalization

White Collar Jobs and the Rise of Service Offshoring
Runjuan Liu Daniel Trefler 2011

We study how the rise of trade in services with China and India has impacted U.S. labour markets. The topic has two understudied aspects: it deals with service trade (most studies deal with manufacturing trade) and it examines the historical first of U.S. workers competing with educated but low-wage foreign workers. Our empirical agenda is made complicated by the endogeneity of service imports and the endogenous sorting of workers across occupations... more »

Can Tourism Encourage Better Export Performance and Diversification in Nepal?

Jose Reis Gonzalo Varela 2013

Entering and successfully surviving in export markets is a costly process for firms. Key steps for success include learning about the existence of foreign demand, determining the production costs of exportable goods, building a high-quality reputation, succeeding in product branding to reduce competitive pressures, constant upgrading of quality standards to better serve demanding international clients, and remaining competitive with other players in the global marketplace. Drawing on the findings of recent research (Reis and Varela 2013), this note argues that tourism can help alleviate some of these costs by providing a relatively inexpensive platform for cost discovery and acting as a low-cost in-house trade fair, accessible to all domestic producers. more »

Global Trade in Services: Fear, Facts and Offshoring

Bradford Jensen 2011
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The service sector is large and growing. Additionally, international trade in services is growing rapidly. Yet there is a dearth of empirical research on the size, scope and potential impact of services trade. The underlying source of this gap is well-known—official statistics on the service sector in general, and trade in services in particular, lack the level of detail available for the manufacturing sector in many dimensions... more »

How Much Does Gravity Deflect Services Trade?

James E. Anderson 2012

Simple measures show that there is proportionally less international trade in services than in goods, and survey evidence suggests that border barriers are important. But much service production is extremely localized within countries, reducing international trade independently of border barriers and thus befogging attempts to see the size of border barriers. The fog is pushed back in this paper by measuring the e ects of gravity on the services trade of Canada's provinces from 1997 to 2007... more »

How Will Changes in Globalization Impact Growth in South Asia?

Ejaz Ghani Rahul Anand 2009

The current global crisis may change globalization itself, as both developed and developing countries adjust to global imbalances that contributed to the crisis. Will these changes help or hinder economic recovery and growth in South Asia? This is the focus of this paper. The three models of globalization--trade, capital, and economic management--may not be the same in the future... more »

Measuring the Cost of International Trade in Services

Sébastien Miroudot Jehan Sauvage Ben Shepherd 2010

We present a new dataset of international trade costs in services sectors. Using a theory-based methodology combined with data on domestic shipments and cross-border trade, we find that trade costs in services are much higher than in goods sectors: a multiple of two to three times in many cases. Trade costs in services have remained relatively steady over the last ten years, whereas trade costs in goods have fallen overall at an impressive rate... more »

Outsourcing and Imported Services in BEA’s Industry Accounts

2006

Outsourcing of professional and support services by U. S. firms, especially goods producing firms, is one of the factors that has contributed to the steady increase in the service sector’s share of the U.S. economy. Outsourced services typically include software production, information and data processing services, computer systems design, professional, scientific, and technical services, and administrative and support services… more »

Recent Trends in US Services Trade

2010 Annual Report
Samantha Brady Erick Oh 2010
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Recent Trends in U.S. Services Trade, 2010 Annual Report focuses principally on infrastructure services (banking, electricity, insurance, retailing, securities, and telecommunications), which are consumed by every firm irrespective of economic sector. The largest infrastructure service firms are located in developed countries and offer their services globally through cross-border trade and affiliate transactions. Economic growth in developing countries around the world continues to create new opportunities for expansion and investment by infrastructure service firms... more »

The Economic Effects of Significant U.S. Import Restraints Eight Update 2013

Special Topic: Services' Contribution to Manufacturing
2013
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The U.S. International Trade Commission’s latest update in this series of reports presents results on the economic effects on the U.S. economy of removing significant U.S. import restraints, including U.S. tariffs and tariff-rate quotas on certain agricultural products, textiles and apparel, and other manufactured products. The Commission estimates that liberalization of all significant import restraints quantified in this update would increase annual U.S. welfare by $1.1 billion by 2017. The eighth update also features a special topic chapter on the role of services in manufacturing, which explores trends in U.S. manufacturers’ use of services and the contribution of services to manufacturing output and productivity. more »

The Geographic Scope of Trade

Firm-level evidence on similarities between goods and services
Fergal McCann Farid Toubal 2011

We investigate numerous predictions regarding the relationship between rms' pro- ductivity and the geographic extensive margins of trade in both goods and services. A unique dataset combining French rms' production information with country- product level information on services and goods imports and exports allows us to examine numerous hypotheses... more »

The Statistical Measurement of Services

Recent achievements and remaining challenges
Enrico Giovannini Bill Cave 2005

Services are increasingly important in modern economies contributing about 68% of world economy value added in 2002 and, although at a much lower level, are increasingly traded internationally. These patterns of increasing importance of services are observed in the generality of both “developed” and “developing” economies, although there are economies which show exceptions to the trend… more »

Trade in Services Newsletter

Eurostat 2010

In 2009, EU271 external trade in services2 slowed down compared with 2007 and 2008. EU27 exports of services to the rest of the word fell by 10%, from 524 billion euro in 2008 to 473 bn in 2009, and EU27 imports by 8%, from 446 bn to 409 bn. As a result, EU27 trade in services recorded a reduced surplus of 63 bn in 2009, compared with surpluses of 78 bn in 2008 and 87 bn in 2007... more »