Setting priorities for services trade reform

Personnel

The project will be led and administered by Professor Jenny Corbett, who heads the Australia-Japan Research Centre at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at ANU. She is a Research Fellow of the Centre of Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in the UK and a Research Associate of the Centre on Japanese Economy and Business at Columbia University. She has an extensive record since 1988 of successfully running large grant-funded research projects, as both an administrator and a contributor. Her own research is in the fields of banking and finance, and the comparison of Japan’s economy with other OECD and Asian economies. She has detailed knowledge of regulatory regimes in banking and finance, including prudential regulation of banks and consumer protection regulation of electronic finance. She is uniquely placed to understand the interaction between the protectionist and legitimate economic and social motives for regulation in these areas. She will also contribute in the area of reform sequencing. Her comparative understanding of Japanese and other economies will also assist in the cross-country dimensions of the project.

Professor Christopher Findlay will be the second Chief Investigator in the project. He is head of the School of Economics at the University of Adelaide and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences. He successfully led the previous two ARC funded projects into barriers to services trade, as well as many joint projects with organisations such as the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, the Research Institute of Economy Trade and Industry (RIETI) in Japan and the ASEAN Secretariat. His own research has been analysing the effects of trade and investment policies in services, with special reference to network industries and especially the air transport sector. His first contribution to the project will be new analysis of the effects of trade barriers in air passenger transport, making use of the new information about the regulatory content of bilateral air services agreements to be released by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

The project will also draw on the services of Dr Philippa Dee, currently Visiting Fellow at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at ANU. Previously an Assistant Commissioner at the Productivity Commission, she directed the Commission’s contributions to the two previous ARC-funded projects into barriers to services trade and investment. These covered a range of sectors, including foreign direct investment, banking, electricity generation, distribution services, maritime services and the professions. She also led the subsequent modelling evaluations of the effects of services trade liberalisation, and identified the importance of the distinction between trade barriers that add to price-cost margins and those that add to real resource costs. She will contribute sectoral studies including insurance and education, and provide overall guidance to ensure that the work meets the needs of subsequent modelling evaluations.

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

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