August 4, 2006

Bilateral Services Trade Data and the GTAP database

Good statistical measurement of services trade becomes more and more important now trade in services gets the attention of policymakers. In 1995 many countries decided to liberalise services trade according to the General Agreement for Trade in Services (GATS). Also in the Doha round the WTO members aim to open their markets in services further.

This paper has two aims. The first is a description of CPB's method to modify the GTAP data base, version 6 with bilateral services trade data. The source for constructing bilateral flows in this paper is a recent comprehensive database from the OECD which was established in cooperation with Eurostat, based on the concepts and framework of trade in services set out by the IMF in their balance of payments statistics. We manage to cover flows between 24 OECD countries and four sectors, which equals approximately 75% of the total flows of services world trade in 2001. On the other hand however, it doesn't cover all GTAP services sectors.

The second is our proposal to contribute (updated) bilateral services trade data to the GTAP database, version 7, base year 2004. These data will include 24 reporting OECD countries with 24 to 55 partner countries for 10 services sectors.