Services procurement under the WTO’s agreement on government procurement: whither market access?

Shingal, Anirudh (2010): Services procurement under the WTO’s agreement on government procurement: whither market access? Forthcoming in: World Trade Review , Vol. 4, No. 10 (October 2011): pp. 1-23.

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 whether 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 that 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, the Japanese government is not purchasing as much from abroad as its 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.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Services, public procurement, GPA, Japan, Switzerland
• Subjects: H - Public Economics > H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies > H57 - Procurement; F - International Economics > F1 - Trade > F13 - Trade Policy ; International Trade Organizations; F - International Economics > F1 - Trade > F10 - General

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