TIISA annual conference and PhD workshop held at WTI

Jointly organised by the WTI and the University of Adelaide, the conference took as its theme ‘Trade in Services by Mode of Supply’.

The focus of the event was on measurement challenges of services trade flows and policy barriers. 

In line with the network’s interdisciplinary character, it included papers in the fields of law, political science and business and economics.

The three conference sessions were chaired by Hein Roelfsema, Utrecht University; Christopher Findlay, University of Adelaide; and Ingo Borchert, University of Sussex.

WTI Managing Director Professor Joseph Francois presented a paper on 'Bindings, policy risk, and market access in services', which among other things quantifies uncertainty related to services trade policies. 

The conference was preceded by a one-day PhD workshop on the same theme, chaired by Richard Pomfret, University of Adelaide, that was also held at the WTI.

During the workshop, Olga Pindyk of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) presented a consolidated database on services trade that she created with Prof. Francois. An earlier version of the database and corresponding working paper is available on the World Bank website.

TIISA is a transnational consortium of academics from leading institutions in Europe, Australia and Asia who do research on domestic regulation and global governance of international services trade and investment flows.