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A European industrial policy for services: the Single Market
Industrial policy is back on the European agenda. Inside the European Commission headquarters, policy makers are fiercely discussing the instruments, sectors, and ways of funding for a new European...
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Market Structures in Services
Services have long been thought to suffer from a productivity problem. In fact, there is a long-standing concern that services add little to the economy. Particularly compared to manufacturing, which...
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Lessons from Uber for the taxi industry
Once again taxi drivers have blocked the streets in a major European city as part of a protest against the ride-sharing service Uber. The latest demonstration took place in Madrid mirroring similar...
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Online Platform Restrictions and Small Firm Exports
Stricter rules on online platforms restrain potential trade, especially for smaller businesses. This is because online platforms facilitate export and import by lowering transaction and information...
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The Free Flow of Non-Personal Data
Earlier this month MEPs voted to support the final text on the free flow of non-personal data across the European Union (EU). A vast majority of the European Parliament voted in favour of this new...
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Compulsory Licensing of IP-protected Drugs: Colombia’s Panacea for Access to Better Healthcare Services?
On 30 May 2018, Colombia joined the OECD as the group’s 37th member. Prior to the country’s accession, the Colombian government implemented a number of reforms aimed at modernising its economy...
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Are Services Really Not Helping the Economy?
Bullocks! That is the conclusion that came to me when I participated in the roundtable conference on services and economic development in Tokyo last week. This conference was organized by the Asian...
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A US Retreat from TPP: What Does Services Trade Tell Us?
During last weekend’s summit meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders in Peru, President Obama made the case that failure to sign on to TPP would “undermine our position across the region”. It would...
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Why Italy Fails and Swedish Economists are Smug
Our friends at Bruegel posted a nice piece called "Why does Italy not grow?" which I missed when it was first published (until a chronically sleep-deprived friend posted it on her Facebook). The...
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India, the WTO Bali Package, and Global Value Chains
India’s economy has become much more liberal over the last 20 years. Its applied tariff rate has gone down from a high 113% in 1990-91 to a low 13.7 by taking a simple average although some tariff...