1. SERVICES TRADE RESTRICTIVENESS: PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
OECD Experts Meeting on the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI)
Paris, 2-3 July 2009
Massimo Geloso Grosso and Rainer Lanz
OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate

2. OUTLINE Review of the methodology Results Robustness checks
Relevance for trade
Conclusions

3. IDENTIFICATION OF BARRIERS
Identification according to three criteria
Regulations covered by the GATS framework
Restrictions included in RTAs
Regulations identified as relevant at the 2008 OECD Experts Meeting on Business Services
Main sources of information
OECD PMR
OECD TAD survey
OECD FDI Regulatory Restrictiveness Index

4. CATEGORIES OF MEASURES
Restrictions on foreign ownership and other market entry conditions
Restrictions on the movement of people
Discriminatory measures, standards and equivalence
Price controls and regulations on market behaviour
Barriers to competition
Regulatory transparency and licensing/permit systems

5. CLASSIFICATION OF RESTRICTIONS
STRI according to the GATS framework
Market access and national treatment
Domestic regulation and other
Modes of supply
Establishment of firms versus their ongoing operations
Discriminatory versus non-discriminatory measures

6. SCORING AND WEIGHTING All variables are transformed into binary
95% of the measures are binary
Expert judgment forms the basis for the weighting scheme
Weights to each category of measures according to the ranking at the Experts Meeting on Business Services
Equal weights have been applied to measures within each category
Other weighting schemes have been employed as robustness checks
Principal component analysis
Equal weights
Random weights

7. AGGREGATION

8. STRI FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

9. STRI BY CATEGORY OF RESTRICTIONS

10. STRI ACCORDING TO THE GATS FRAMEWORK

11. STRI BY OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

12. STRI BY PROFESSIONAL SERVICES SUBSECTOR

13. ROBUSTNESS CHECKS AND RELEVANCE FOR TRADE
STRI robust to all alternative weighting schemes
Spearman rank correlations of weighting schemes
Equal weights: 0.84
PCA weights: 0.84
STRI negatively associated with:
Imports (EBOPS)
Inward FDI
Inward foreign affiliates sales

14. CONCLUSIONS
Restrictions on foreign ownership and commercial establishment in general
Impediments to mode 4 play a non-negligible role
Market access and national treatment measures have a similar significance as domestic regulatory and other measures
The STRI is remarkably robust to alternative weighting schemes and reflects trade restrictiveness