Services Procurement Under the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement: Whither Market Access?

NCCR Trade Regulation Working Paper No. 2011/02

World Trade Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 1-23, 2011

32 Pages Posted: 6 Mar 2010 Last revised: 21 Aug 2011

See all articles by Anirudh Shingal

Anirudh Shingal

S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research; European University Institute - Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS); University of Bern - World Trade Institute

Date Written: April 14, 2011

Abstract

This paper studies the government procurement of services from foreign suppliers by conducting a statistical analysis of data submitted by Japan and Switzerland to the WTO's Committee on Government Procurement. Using several metrics, the paper examines if the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) has led to greater market access for foreign suppliers in services procurement. Our results indicate that despite the GPA, the proportions of services contracts awarded to foreigners have declined over time for both countries and in the absence of this decline, the value of services contracts awarded to foreign firms would have been more than 15 times higher in the case of Japan and nearly 68 times more in the case of Switzerland. We also find that for the same services categories, at least the Japanese government is not purchasing as much from abroad as it's private sector is importing from the rest of the world, a finding that further points to the home-bias in that government's public purchase decisions.

Keywords: Services, public procurement, GPA, Japan, Switzerland

JEL Classification: F10, F13, H57

Suggested Citation

Shingal, Anirudh, Services Procurement Under the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement: Whither Market Access? (April 14, 2011). NCCR Trade Regulation Working Paper No. 2011/02, World Trade Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 1-23, 2011 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1564808

Anirudh Shingal (Contact Author)

S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research ( email )

Munshi Nagar, Dadabhai Road
Andheri West
Mumbai, Maharashtra 119579
India

European University Institute - Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) ( email )

Villa La Fonte, via delle Fontanelle 18
50016 San Domenico di Fiesole
Florence, Florence 50014
Italy

University of Bern - World Trade Institute ( email )

Hallerstrasse 6/8
Bern, 3012
Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://www.nccr-trade.org

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