Eleventh Annual East Asian Seminar on Economics.

• Position: Summary of papers presented

Dee, Hanslow, and Phamduc analyze the liberalization of trade in services in order to assess the extent to which the traditional Stolper-Samuelson and Rybczynski results in the Heckscher-Ohlin framework are still relevant. In the process, they examine whether and how the benefits of such liberalization are passed on to other sectors in the economy. In that way, the authors open up the "black box" of trade in services in general equilibrium, and explore the implications for different sectors of the economy.

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is credited with having created a more secure environment for such trade. But even though GATS put in place a useful framework for dealing with explicit protection, it has generated neither the negotiating momentum to reduce such protection nor the rules to ensure that protection takes a desirable form. Mattoo suggests possible improvements to the GATS in the specific commitments made by countries and the negotiating methodology. In general, the policy instrument should be targeted closely on the policy objective, minimizing by-product distortions.

Snape addresses the policy-objective link for services, with a stronger emphasis on the specification of objectives than has been apparent in some of the literature. He draws on reports of the Australian Productivity Commission on Broadcasting, Gambling, International Aviation, and Architects to illuminate these issues. The lessons are not surprising: that it is best to use policy structures that are attuned to objectives and to seek generic policies in this context. Policies attuned to particular trade investment, social and cultural, and competition objectives should extend beyond specific industries and beyond specific forms of production, consumption, and trading. In that regard, international trade policies are not used appropriately to improve labor standards, or the environment. Countries' domestic policies should align objectives and policies consistently and efficiently.

Chen, Chou, Kuo, and Wang first employ Hoekman's method to estimate the barriers to the services trade in Taiwan. They then apply a multiregional and computable general equilibrium model to analyze the impacts of global trade liberalization in services as well as in commodities. They also consider the technology spillovers from developed countries to developing countries via imports of intermediate inputs, capital goods, and services. Finally, they investigate the...