Camille Reverdy will Give a Seminar on Export Potential in Services on May 3, 2019

Camille Reverdy from the University Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne is currently visiting KCG as a KCG Guest Researcher. She is also a Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellow with the EU Trade and Investment Policy ITN. On May 3, 2019 (Friday) she will give a presentation based on her recent paper titled “Export Potential in Services: Do Policy Measures Matter?” at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Abstract of the paper: Trade in services has gained importance in the world economy in the last decades, outpacing the growth of trade in goods. Even though services trade represents 13% of global GDP, disaggregated services data is still scarce. Indeed, while developed countries usually report their trade data by service sector and partner, developing countries mostly report only the exports and imports of broad service sectors without any detail on the source or the destination of the trade flow. In an attempt to reduce the information gap existing in services trade, this paper assesses the general equilibrium effects of a reduction in bilateral trade costs, based on a structural gravity model. In a second step, the expected trade values following the reduction in trade costs are compared to the observed export values, representing the ‘trade potential’. Thirdly, I estimate the impact of the policy measures applied by the destination country on the value of this potential. I find that an increase in the level of trade restrictiveness in a given sector decreases the probability that an exporter will face a positive potential with this partner in this sector. Almost 40% of negative potential are associated with a ‘no restriction’ environment in the partner country. Focusing on the ‘intensive margin’, i.e. on the positive potential values, I find that an increase of the restrictiveness level by one unit decreases the value of the trade potential by 1.1%.

The seminar will take place on May 3, 2019 (Fr.) at 12:00 in the Medienraum (A-211) at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (Kiellinie 66, 24105 Kiel).