Erik van der Marel

This paper examines whether restrictive data policies impact trade in services over the internet. We have collected comparable information on a variety of policy measures that regulate data for a wide group of countries for the years 2006-2016. This information is compiled in a weighted index that assesses the restrictiveness of these countries’ data policies. We distinguish between policies regulating the cross-border movement of data and policies regulating the...

This paper examines how policies regulating the cross-border movement and domestic use of electronic data on the internet impact the productivity of firms in sectors relying on electronic data. In doing so, we collect regulatory information on a group of developed economies and create an index that measures the regulatory restrictiveness of each country’s data policies. The index is based on observable policy measures that explicitly inhibit the cross-border...

The use of local content requirements (LCRs) has been growing for a long time. Used by developed as well as developing countries, they aim to promote the use of local inputs and serve the purpose of fostering domestic industries. Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the USA are very frequent users of LCRs. India is by far the most prominent user, followed by Brazil. While LCRs might have perceived benefits related to specific policy...

Economic growth in the European Union has been low for more than a decade now. While some of the poor performance can be explained by the crisis, the sustained low growth is to a very large extent the consequence of sluggish productivity performance. Productivity is above all an indicator of a society’s long-term welfare and measures how effective we are at using our scarce resources in the economy. Therefore, it is critically important – and any reform effort...