Abstract

South Asia’s economy has grown rapidly, and the region has made a significant reduction in poverty. However, the available jobs for the growing working population remain limited. Policy makers are contending with lingering concerns about jobless growth and poor job quality. Exports to Jobs: Boosting the Gains from Trade in South Asia posits that exports, could bring higher wages and better jobs to South Asia. We use a new methodology to estimate the potential impact from higher South Asian exports per worker on wages and employment. We find that increasing exports per worker would result in higher wages, mostly for the better-off groups—like the better-educated workers, men, and the more-experienced workers—although the less-skilled and rural workers would benefit from new job opportunities outside of the informal sector. Our report shows that to spread the benefits from higher exports widely, policies are needed to raise skills and get certain groups, such as women and youth, into more and better jobs. Complementary measures include removing trade barriers and investing in infrastructure, and increasing the ability of workers to find higher-paying jobs. Together, these actions would help South Asian countries spread the gains from being closely integrated into the global economy through exporting. This book, which is the product of a partnership between the International Labour Organization and the World Bank, contributes to our understanding of the impact that growing exports can have on increasing well-being, and it bridges the gap between academic research and policy making. Document type: Book

Abstract

Globalization is creating many new trade and growth opportunities, with services trade increasingly becoming an issue for export-oriented economies. Services are important to country trade strategies, because they represent activities in which countries may have a comparative advantage, and they are drivers of competitiveness for the whole economy. This paper uses data from the World Development Indicators, two new databases (the Export in Value-Added database from the Global Trade Analysis Project, and Trade in Services data), and firm-level data. The paper employs a wide range of indicators to analyze the trade competitiveness of the services sector in the Russian Federation. Since service exports are less than would be expected considering Russia's level of development, the study finds that the contribution of services to export diversification could be heightened significantly. The scale of Russian business services exports is relatively low, although exports of traditional services, like transport and travel, are performing well. Despite the relatively minor importance of exports of modern services, the category of other business services has in recent years been growing fast, and business services have strengthened their revealed comparative advantages. Yet Russia still has much potential for expanding trade in modern services. There is also potential to diversify services exports to other markets, such as France, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia, which today seems underexploited. Finally, although exports of direct services are low, services such as transport, distribution, finance, and other business services are making major contributions to other exports, in particular energy. Document type: Book