Suchergebnisse

As a mall country among Georgia's growth factors in future might well be foreign trade. The close cooperation with the EU within the European neighborhood policy centers on improving and facilitating trade between the partners. In 2006 the EU granted Georgia the GSP+ status which allows almost duty free imports of Georgian products in the EU. The extension of these trade preferences is negotiated in the realm of a deep and com-prehensive free trade agreement between the EU and Georgia. A closer look on the trade data reveal that no trade enhancing effect of the GSP+ can be detected. The available trade data are significantly blurred by the inclusion of energy trade from Georgia which is likely only transit trade from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. If these export items and the movements of some raw material prices are removed from the data no export enhancing effect can be found. In addition, in the past the composi-tion of Georgian exports remained highly biased towards raw materials and simple products. Improvements in export came from the export of services, namely tourism and pipe-line transport service. Later is a significant source of income as well as the transfers of Georgian migrants working abroad? The export of pipeline service might increase in future further if envisaged additional pipelines over Georgian soil realize. Since these are mainly built with foreign capital increasing profit repatriation will result in higher capital outflows in future. At the moment the EU negotiates an deep and comprehensive free trade agreement with Georgia which foresees beyond the abolition of tariffs the removal of all types of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) . An important part of trade facilitation would be the adop-tion of EU standards and norms which hinder at the moments Georgian exporters. Al-though the EU is prepared to contribute with financial and technical help the removal of NTBs is costly for Georgian firms. The available studies forecast however significant positive effects from a comprehensive trade liberalization between the partners. Al-though not captured by the mentioned feasibility studies on a comprehensive EU-Georgian trade agreement, the strongest export enhancing effect for Georgia will only come from broadening the existing export basket. To do so best chances for Georgian firms are seen in transit services and the production of parts and components as a sup-plier for multinational firms. The existing range of export goods does not exploit effec-tively the comparative advantages of the country.

Starting in the 1960s with the Kennedy Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), nontariff measures (NTMs) have been replacing tariffs continuously as the core element of trade negotiations. Today they take centre stage in all EU trade agreements with industrialised and emerging economies. By matching product codes to the rich data of NTM notifications to the World Trade Organization and complementary information provided by the Temporary Trade Barriers Database, we provide a valuable open data source for trade policy analysis. Using data for 148 NTM-imposing economies for the period 1995-2019, we describe the evolution of different types of NTMs along countries and sectors, with a special focus on NTMs implemented by the EU. The analysis of our data, paired with comparisons with other sources, shows the merits and shortcomings of the WTO's service in providing transparency over members' trade policies.

Many different approaches have developed for the evaluation of non-tariff measures (NTMs) and free trade agreements (FTAs). Moving on from models using simple dummy variables, today a range of databases can capture different aspects of NTMs and FTAs. Some assess the depth of FTAs by extracting information from legal texts. Other data sources are based on surveys, on complaints by trading partners at the World Trade Organization (WTO) or notifications by companies or countries. This paper uses a gravity model to assess the value added of information on FTAs and NTMs by evaluating ex-post their ability to predict the trade effects of the EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, the first 'second-generation' FTA of the EU, applied since 2011. Our results show that, when accounting for information on the FTA components, no extra trade effect is attributable to the EU-South Korea FTA. The message from the evolution of NTMs differs considerably according to the indicator used, but trade predictions are hardly affected. On the aggregate country level, provisions on investments exhibit a particularly strong positive effect, while regulations on intellectual property rights seem to hamper bilateral trade. Most specifications, furthermore, point to a negative effect of differences in the number of technical barriers to trade (TBT) applied and sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) against which trading partners issued complaints at the WTO.

Since the mid-1980s a substantial body of research has taken shape on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the WTO or regional trade agreements, especially the EU. However, an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of unilateral services sector liberalization. The literature touches on important linkages between trade and FDI in services and the general pattern of productivity growth and industrial development. This paper surveys the literature on services trade, focusing on contributions that investigate the determinants of international trade and investment in services, the potential gains from greater trade (and liberalization) and efforts to cooperate to achieve such liberalization through trade agreements. There is increasing evidence that services liberalization is a major potential source of welfare gains, and that the performance of service sectors, and thus services policies, may be an important determinant of trade volumes, the distributional effects of trade, and economy-wide growth. At the same time, they are also an important source of increasing political unease about the impacts of globalization on labor markets.