Services Trade Restrictions Database

The World Bank’s Services Trade Restrictions Database aims to facilitate dialogue about, and analysis of, services trade policies. The database provides comparable information on services trade policy measures for 103 countries, five sectors (telecommunications, finance, transportation, retail and professional services) and key modes of delivery.
Compared to the vast empirical literature on policies affecting trade in goods, the empirical analysis of services trade policy is still in its infancy. One major constraint has been inadequate data on policies affecting services trade. Our limited knowledge of the pattern of services policy contrasts with the importance of services. Today, some 80 percent of GDP in the United States and the European Union originates from services, and the proportion is well over 50 percent in most countries, industrial and developing alike.