Suchergebnisse

Using unexplored Japanese and Swiss public procurement data over 1990-2003, we examine the effect of macroeconomic, political economy, procurement-specific and domestic policy factors on governments' sourcing decisions. We also provide for an empirical test of Baldwin's (1970, 1984) "neutrality proposition" and for the effectiveness of the WTO's Uruguay Round Agreement on Government Procurement (URGPA) in increasing foreign market access. Our results suggest the importance of the magnitude of procurement demand, domestic firm attributes and unobserved sector-specific heterogeneity in these governments' purchases from abroad. However, the expected impact of traditional macroeconomic variables and political budget cycles does not come through in our results. Public and private sector imports do not offset each other in our analyses for Japan and only selectively for Switzerland. Finally, membership of the GPA is only found to increase the value of foreign procurement in Switzerland, though it seems to increase the import demand for contracts in both countries.

The WTO's Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) has data reporting obligations for all its Contracting Parties. Submitting such data promotes transparency in public procurement and also signals tendencies towards discrimination. However, most developing countries, especially emerging economies, are non-members of the GPA and therefore have no comparable data reporting obligations. In most cases, this has led to an absence of any reliable data on these countries' public purchases, which poses a serious challenge in international negotiations on the subject and in examining the impact of protectionist measures in these countries' public markets. In this short paper, we attempt to overcome these data challenges by developing a methodology to estimate the size of procurement markets in non-GPA countries as well as foreign market access therein. We also show the results from this methodology for estimating the EU's access in select emerging economies' public markets.

This paper studies the government procurement of services from foreign suppliers by conducting a statistical analysis of data submitted by Japan and Switzerland to the WTO's Committee on Government Procurement. Using several metrics, the paper examines if the WTO's Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) has led to greater market access for foreign suppliers in services procurement. Our results indicate that despite the GPA, the proportions of services contracts awarded to foreigners have declined over time for both countries and in the absence of this decline, the value of services contracts awarded to foreign firms would have been more than 15 times higher in the case of Japan and nearly 68 times more in the case of Switzerland. We also find that for the same services categories, at least the Japanese government is not purchasing as much from abroad as it's private sector is importing from the rest of the world, a finding that further points to the home-bias in that government's public purchase decisions.

RésuméDans cette analyse novatrice consacrée à l'effet de la libéralisation du commerce et des investissements relatifs aux services sur la répartition des gains, les auteurs mettent l'accent sur le rôle de caractéristiques comme le mode de fourniture et la nature de la branche d'activité. Ils complètent les statistiques descriptives par une analyse économétrique effectuée à partir des données de l'OCDE sur les restrictions aux échanges de services pour 2014–2016. Les résultats ne font apparaître aucune association entre la libéralisation unilatérale des services et une éventuelle perte d'emplois nette. Cependant, des études empiriques reposant sur des données plus exhaustives seraient nécessaires pour en savoir plus.

ResumenEste estudio de carácter exploratorio se basa en estadísticos descriptivos y en un análisis econométrico para examinar los efectos en el empleo de los regímenes unilaterales aplicados al comercio de servicios, con datos del Índice de Restricción del Comercio de Servicios de la OCDE para 44 países miembros y no miembros de la OCDE y 22 subsectores durante el periodo 2014–2016. Los resultados sugieren que la liberalización unilateral de los servicios no está asociada a efectos netos de desplazamiento de la mano de obra. Sin embargo, serán necesarias fuentes de datos mejoradas para una comprensión más completa de esta cuestión.

AbstractThis article offers novel insights into the modal and sectoral characteristics of trade in services that may exert an influence on the redistributive properties of liberalization in service trade and investment. It uses descriptive statistics, and econometric analysis to examine the labour market effects of unilateral service regimes, drawing on data from the OECD's Services Trade Restrictiveness Index for a sample of 44 OECD and non‐OECD countries and 22 sectors over the period 2014–16. Whereas the findings suggest that the unilateral liberalization of services is not associated with net labour displacement effects, the authors call for empirical evidence, based on improved data sources, for a fuller understanding of this issue.