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on Confederation of Independent States |
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Issue of 2014‒11‒12
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Dorothée Rouzet; Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås; Frederic Gonzales; Massimo Geloso Grosso; Iza Lejárraga; Sébastien Miroudot; Asako Ueno |
| Abstract: | This paper presents the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for financial services. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign services providers. The indices are calculated for 40 countries, the 34 OECD members and Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. The STRIs capture de jure restrictions. This report presents the first vintage of indicators for commercial banking and insurance services and captures regulations in force in 2013. The scores in commercial banking range between 0.06 and 0.55, with a sample average of 0.19. The scores in insurance services range between 0.05 and 0.63, with a sample average of 0.20. The results are mainly driven by restrictions on market entry, where significant impediments remain in the form of foreign equity limits, restrictions on legal form, discriminatory licensing criteria and restrictions on cross-border transactions. Barriers to competition, including regulation of products and prices and preferential treatment granted to state-owned financial institutions, also make a substantive contribution to the index values. The paper presents the list of measures included in the indices, the scoring and weighting system for calculating the indices and an analysis of the results. |
| Keywords: | trade policy, bank, trade in services, services trade restrictions, regulation, insurance, regulatory reform, services liberalisation |
| JEL: | F13 F14 F21 G21 G22 G28 L88 |
| Date: | 2014–11–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:traaab:175-en&r=cis |
| By: | Massimo Geloso Grosso; Iza Lejárraga; Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås; Frédéric Gonzales; Sébastien Miroudot; Asako Ueno; Dorothée Rouzet |
| Abstract: | This paper presents the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for construction, architecture and engineering services. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign services providers. The indices are calculated for 40 countries, the 34 OECD members and Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. This report presents the first vintage of indicators for construction, architecture and engineering services and captures de jure regulations in force in 2013. The results for construction services indicate that the overall level of restrictiveness is relatively low, ranging from 0.05 to 0.32, with an average of 0.16. The more elevated levels of restriction can be largely attributed to general measures affecting all sectors of the economy. The STRI also supports the view that architecture and engineering services are less restrictively regulated than other accredited professional services, notably legal and accounting services. The average value for the STRI among the countries in the sample is 0.22 for architecture services, connoting a relatively low degree of regulatory restrictiveness; the corresponding value is only marginally lower, 0.2, for engineering services. The majority of regulations affecting trade in these sectors concern the movement of people. |
| Keywords: | services trade, construction services, engineering services, services trade restrictions, regulation, architecture services |
| JEL: | F13 F14 K33 L74 L84 |
| Date: | 2014–11–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:traaab:170-en&r=cis |
| By: | Massimo Geloso Grosso; Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås; Asako Ueno; Frederic Gonzales; Iza Lejárraga; Sébastien Miroudot; Dorothée Rouzet |
| Abstract: | This paper presents the services trade restrictiveness indices (STRIs) for transport and courier services. The STRIs are composite indices taking values between zero and one, zero representing an open market and one a market completely closed to foreign services providers. The indices are calculated for 40 countries, the 34 OECD members and Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. This report presents the first vintage of indicators for transport and courier services and captures de jure regulations in force in 2013. The STRI supports the view that these services are subject to very different regulatory frameworks and, in some cases, to a relatively elevated degree of regulation. Indices for air transport covering measures affecting commercial establishment and accompanying movement of natural persons are on average quite high (0.43), with little variation across countries. A preliminary assessment of restrictiveness in cross-border trade in the sector shows that, while some progress in easing restrictions has been achieved through open skies agreements, significant limitations remain in place. The maritime transport sector is moderately open with an average STRI of 0.25. Foreign equity restrictions are still quite common in the sector and contribute significantly to the index. Most other sector-specific restrictions are found in the cabotage market and in ports. In road freight transport, the results confirm that the domestic road freight transport regime has been significantly liberalised over the years, and currently commercial establishment in the sector is largely affected by horizontal measures. The overall level of restrictiveness is relatively low with an average of 0.16, but exhibits pretty large variation. With respect to rail freight, the STRI also supports the view that considerable reforms have been undertaken in the sector in the past decades. The average level of restrictiveness is moderate at 0.22, although two countries maintain a statutory state-owned monopoly, which implies that the sector is completely closed to foreign suppliers. Finally, for courier services the results show that the overall level of restrictiveness is moderate with a sample average of 0.26. There is, however, large variation in STRI indices among countries. The elevated levels of restrictiveness are found in countries where foreign equity restrictions or statutory monopolies exist. |
| Keywords: | services trade, courier services, transport services, services trade restrictions, regulation |
| JEL: | F13 F14 K33 L87 L91 L92 L93 |
| Date: | 2014–11–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:traaab:176-en&r=cis |
| By: | Masih, Mansur; Majid, Hamdan Abdul |
| Abstract: | This study accounts for the time-varying pattern of price shock transmission, exploring stock market co-movements using continuous wavelet coherency methodology to find the correlation analysis between stock market indices of Malaysia, Thailand (Asian), Greece (Europe) and United States, in the time-frequency domain of time-series data. We employ the Wavelet Coherence method with the consideration of the financial crisis episodes of 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, 1998 Russian Sovereign Debt Default, 9/11 Attack on World Trade Centre US, 2008 US Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis and the recent 2010-2011 Greece Debt Crisis. Results tend to indicate that the relations among indices are strong but not homogeneous across time scales, that local phenomena are more evident than others in these markets and that there seems to be no quick transmission through markets around the world, but a significant time delay. The relations among these indices have changed and evolved through time, mostly due to the financial crises that occurred at different time periods. Results also favour the view that regionally and economically closer markets exhibit higher correlation and more short run co-movements among them. The high correlation between the two regional indices of Malaysia and Thailand, indicates that for the international investors, it is little gain to include both in their portfolio diversification. Strong co-movement is mostly confined to long-run fluctuations favouring contagion analysis. This indicates that shocks in the high frequency but low period are short term but shocks in the low frequency but high period are long term with the trend elements affecting the co-movements of the indices. The study of market correlations on the frequency-time scale domain using continuous wavelet coherency is appealing and can be an important tool in decision making for different types of investors. |
| Keywords: | stock market comovement; continuous wavelet transform; cross-wavelet; wavelet coherency; frequency-time scale domain |
| JEL: | C22 C58 E44 G15 |
| Date: | 2013–12–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:58313&r=cis |