Myanmar: Elements of a Policy Research Agenda in Services Trade

Abstract

The case for open services markets is today considerably easier to make than when services were first mooted for inclusion as a potential agenda item for multilateral trade diplomacy in the years that preceded the launch of the Uruguay Round. This is so for a number of reasons, not least of which the much greater level of understanding of the contribution of services to the process of economic development and, centrally, of the dual nature of services as both final and intermediate products. Equally important is the greater familiarity with the conduct of service sector reforms that two and a half decades of learning by doing made possible by the rising tide of services negotiations conducted at the WTO and in preferential settings have allowed. Just as important are significant, if far from optimal, improvements in the availability of empirical evidence on the effects of service sector reforms and of trade and investment liberalization in the sector. This chapter deals with elements of policy research in services trade in developing countries with particular reference to Myanmar.