International trade in services. A growing contribution to Belgium’s current balance
Abstract
Service activities hold an ambiguous position in the economy. Although they represent a dominant share of activity and employment, they have only a minor position in international trade. Generally speaking, trade in services has therefore attracted less interest than trade in goods in the context of competitiveness policy, and economic research has paid less attention to it. Yet despite the low gross volume of international trade in services, the services balance has grown in Belgium over the past fifteen years. Compensating in part for the deteriorating balance of trade in goods, net exports of services have gradually become the primary driver of the current account balance. Belgium’s central position in the European economic fabric is one of the main contributory factors in the good performance of Belgium’s trade in services. This has led to the development of trade and logistics services, particularly thanks to the importance of the port of Antwerp in maritime traffic. Given its central position combined with the quality of its human capital, Belgium is also the location for the headquarters of the European institutions and several multinational bodies, and that is another decisive factor in the growth of service exports. However, Belgium’s good general performance in trade in services is not seen in all service categories. In particular, services connected with information and communication technologies have not grown particularly strongly. Yet these services constitute a growth catalyst that could benefit the whole economy, and the human capital needed for such a development is available in Belgium.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Article provided by National Bank of Belgium in its journal Economic Review.
Volume (Year): (2011)
Issue (Month): III (December)
Pages: 53-68
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Boulevard de Berlaimont 14, B-1000 Bruxelles
Phone: (+ 32) (0) 2 221 25 34
Fax: (+ 32) (0) 2 221 31 62
Email:
Web page: http://www.nbb.be/
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: services; competitiveness; market share; transport; services for public authorities; business services;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
- D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Bala Ramasamy & Matthew Yeung, 2010. "The Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Services," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 573-596, 04.
- Andrea Ariu & Giordano Mion, 2010. "Trade in services : IT and task content," Working Paper Research 200, National Bank of Belgium.
- Rainer Lanz & Sébastien Miroudot & Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås, 2011. "Trade in Tasks," OECD Trade Policy Papers 117, OECD Publishing.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbb:ecrart:y:2011:m:december:i:iii:p:53-68For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.