Setting priorities for services trade reform

Industry partner organisation

The Productivity Commission was the industry partner in the previous two ARC-funded projects. It has a long history of developing and using empirical techniques to demonstrate the effects of regulatory interventions on economic performance. Its mandate to do such work has been dramatically expanded by recent decisions by the Council of Australian Governments and by the outcomes from its most recent review of National Competition Policy. The trade focus of the current project matches the domestic regulatory reform focus of the Commission, because the services trade barriers that appear to have the most detrimental economic effects are the non-discriminatory barriers that affect domestic new entrants as much as foreigners.

It is expected that at much of the analysis in the forthcoming project will have a cross-country dimension. As the Commission has found in the areas of education and health, it is often useful to compare Australia’s regulatory approach and economic performance with those in other countries, in order to tease out the possible effects of policy changes at home. But where it would suit the Commission’s purpose more to take a purely Australian approach to the empirical work, or even a comparative approach across Australian States, this will provide the project with methodologies that the participants from Australian National University can then apply on a cross-country basis.

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Conference program and papers — 2009
Conference program and papers — 2008
Conference program and papers — 2007

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