Mapping the universe of services disciplines in PTAs

While several sources can be found providing inventories of PTAs that have been signed and/or entered into force, surprisingly little work of a comparative nature has been carried out with a view to mapping the evolution - over time, across regions and between various types of agreements (e.g. North-South, South-South and North-North) of trade rules under PTAs. This is particularly the case in the area of trade in services, where literature of a comparative nature has failed to keep pace with burgeoning treaty making conducted at the WTO’s periphery. Several papers in recent years have targeted either a specific region or a specific agreement or looked more closely at market opening (e.g. liberalisation) advances in specific sectors. An important gap remains to be filled in the literature that would help policy makers gain a fuller picture of the evolving universe of rules and negotiating architectures in the services field and a better appreciation both of the full extent to which PTAs have achieved GATS+ advances and assess the scope that might exist to migrate best PTA practices in future WTO negotiations.

The project also aims to address the development dimension of evolving services rules by examining a number of possibilities that would help to magnify the development dividends of services negotiations. It addresses the question of how we can make such agreements and the process through which they are brokered, useful means to anticipate negotiating, implementation and/or supply capacity bottlenecks and help devise appropriately targeted and operational aid for trade responses in the services field.