The Trade Effects of a New Agreement on Services Domestic Regulation

In this paper, we project the impact of the implementation of a Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) on Services Domestic Regulation (SDR). We proceed in three steps. First, we include the WTO SDR Index, a binary score of SDR implementation in 23 sectors and 86 economies, in a gravity equation, estimated with the balance of payments services trade. We take into account domestic services trade to identify the impact of the importer-specific SDR Index by interacting the SDR Index with a border dummy, following an established methodology in the gravity literature.