This paper presents improved approaches to measurement of services barriers by using alternative weighting methods and improved econometric specifications; the data include barriers affecting each mode of services supply and additional sector-specific regulatory variables. We provide an illustration of these improvements for banking, insurance, telecom (fixed and mobile), professional (engineering) and distribution services in selected countries in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. We report sector-specific restrictiveness indices at aggregate and modal levels along with aggregate and modal tax equivalents. We also provide confidence intervals for each estimated tax equivalent to take into account the limitations in the estimation techniques. Indeed these limitations lead us to argue against a strict interpretation of the empirical results and in favor of a more flexible, qualitative interpretation, combined with rank ordering of countries for indicative purposes.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.