Saez, Sebastian

Person:
Saez, Sebastian

Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice

Fields of Specialization

Trade, Competitiveness, Regional integration, Trade policy

Departments

Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice

Last updated: January 31, 2023

Biography

Sebastian Saez is a Lead Economist and Coordinator of The Trade and Competitiveness World Bank Program in India. Mr. Saez joined the World Bank Group in January, 2009. Before joining the WBG, he served as advisor to the Minister of Finance of Chile, and was involved in the GATT´s Uruguay Round negotiations. Subsequently, between 1994 and 1997 he was a member of the Chilean Mission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) where he served as Deputy Permanent Representative. In 1998, as an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile he was Head of the Department FTAA - North America, where he was responsible for the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas negotiations. From August 2001 and July 2003 he was Head of the Department of Foreign Trade, Ministry of Economy of Chile. In this capacity, he participated in trade negotiations with European Union, Korea and the United States. In 2005, he joined the International Trade and Integration Division at UN-ECLAC. Since 2009 at the World Bank Group his work was focused on Trade in Services, regulatory matters and competitiveness. He is the co-author of Regulatory Assessment Toolkit: A Practical Methodology to Assess Services Trade and Investment Regulations, 2014 and Valuing Services in Trade: A Competitiveness Diagnostic Toolkit, 2014.

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 18

Integration in Global Value Chains — The Role of Service Inputs: Evidence from India
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Manghnani, Ruchita; Meyer, Birgit; Saez, Sebastian; van Der Marel, Erik
This paper investigates the relationship between the use of service inputs and integration in global value chains. Using macro and detailed firm-level data (for 1990–2017), the study documents the extent of India’s integration into global value chains. Older, larger, and more productive firms and firms with a higher leverage ratio are more likely to be deeply integrated into global value chains. Firms in the information technology services and electronics industry are more deeply integrated into global value chains, compared with textiles. Services are the engine for many global value chain industries as they help coordinate the different stages of production across geographical locations. The findings suggest that both the intensity of service usage as well as the composition or type of service used are important. Firms using service inputs, particularly complex services and information technology and information technology–enabling services intensively are typically more deeply integrated into global value chains.
Firm Performance, Participation in Global Value Chains and Service Inputs: Evidence from India
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Manghnani, Ruchita; Meyer, Birgit; Saez, Sebastian; van Der Marel, Erik
This paper explores the relationship between the use of service inputs, participation in global value chains, and firm productivity. Services play the role of both an intermediate input in production and a coordinator. Using a detailed Indian firm-level data set from 1990–2017, the paper estimates the productivity premium associated with varying depths of global value chain integration and different intensities and types of services used in the production. The study finds that firms in global value chains have a productivity premium between 13 and 22 percent relative to domestic firms, with some variation based on the depth of global value chain integration and the sector to which the firm belongs. Both the type of service inputs used (composition of services) and the origin of services (whether sourced domestically or from abroad) matter for firm performance. While higher aggregate service input use (as captured by the share of expenditure on service inputs) is not necessarily associated with an increase in productivity, increased use of complex services and information technology services is associated with higher productivity. The use of imported services is associated with higher productivity. Moreover, firms that are more deeply integrated in global value chains benefit more from importing services.
Digital Pakistan: A Business and Trade Assessment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05) Rizwan, Nadeem; Saez, Sebastian; van der Marel, Erik
This report analyses the recent trends in Pakistani Information Technologies (IT) and InformationTechnologies enabled Services (ITeS), as well as obstacles confronted by firms. The authors assess the importance of trade costs as a barrier to services growth and development in Pakistan’s domestic market and to seizing the opportunities of global trade. The report also aims to understand and examine the impact of obstacles (i.e., trade costs) confronted by firms. These obstacles increase the costs of selling services and may reduce capacity to compete both in the local market (Pakistan) as well as overseas (exports). These obstacles include direct costs generated by policy barriers that limit market entry, but can also include infrastructure deficiencies, geographical location, and institutional capacities, and/or obstacles imposed by regulatory measures. Among the latter obstacles, examples include difficulties in accessing the information necessary to operate in a market, the predictability and stability of the business environment in a market, and the quality of the decision-making process and administrative procedures of competent authorities in the domestic and export markets. The focus of the report is the trade costs confronted by IT and ITeS firms. IT and ITeS operations are the backbone to provide digital services, digital goods and depend on digital technologies, conform an integral part of the overall ecosystem. The report relies on a survey conducted on 782 IT and ITeS firms across different cities. The objective of the survey was to examine the importance of these factors for Pakistani firms and to provide advice to policymakers. To complement the survey results, the main findings were discussed in focus group structured interviews. Firms interviewed covered different services activities beyond software companies and included both exporters (534 firms) and non-exporters (248 firms), reflecting the export competitiveness as well as domestic competitiveness of Pakistan's IT services sector. The analysis aims to improve our understanding of Pakistan's IT performance and the obstacles confronted in this field.
Trade Facilitation in Services: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05) Gillson, Ian; Molinuevo, Martin; Saez, Sebastian
Beyond their key contribution to value chains in all sectors, services represent a centrally important source of economic and export diversification. This paper discusses how to promote trade in services as a channel for growth, employment, and diversification by assessing services trade costs and identifying policies that contribute to their reduction: a concept termed trade facilitation in services. It summarizes the latest research on the costs facing trade in services beyond discriminatory market access and national treatment and finds that these are high. It proposes measures that could fall under the scope of a potential trade facilitation in services agenda, namely: (i) streamlining processes and procedures used in administering regulatory policies aside from the policy itself, (ii) improving access to information on regulatory policies (that is, transparency), and (iii) boosting the efficiency of governance structures for regulators that set policies affecting trade in services.
Services for Trade Competitiveness: Country and Regional Assessments of Services Trade
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-06-04) Hollweg, Claire H.; Sáez, Sebastián
Recognizing that services affect the ability of countries and their firms to compete on international markets, the World Bank’s Trade and Regional Integration Unit has developed an extensive work program to promote the performance of countries’ domestic services sectors, including services trade. Services for Trade Competitiveness presents selected applications of new methodologies that were developed to assess the competitiveness of countries’ services sectors, discern the types of barriers to services that exist in the regulatory environment, and identify the resulting policy implications. Its assessments are designed for a wide audience, including policy makers in developing countries and development practitioners in international organizations, policy-making institutions, and academia. The purpose of this book is to help developing countries make informed policy choices to increase their chances of benefiting from the increasing prominence of services in international trade.
Exporting Services : A Developing Country Perspective
(World Bank, 2012) Goswami, Arti Grover; Sáez, Sebastián; Mattoo, Aaditya
The book builds on previous research, including that by the World Bank, on trade in services. Such research includes analyses of the effect of liberalizing services in developing countries and sectoral studies on financial, transportation, telecommunication, and professional services, as well as on international negotiations. The conceptual framework for this book is based on the existing literature on the service sector (Francois and Hoekman 2010; Hoekman and Mattoo 2008). Recognizing the heterogeneity in both, economic structure of developing countries and their service exports, this book takes an eclectic approach to identifying successful strategies. Chapter two surveys the literature on determinants of service exports and presents an illustrative empirical model that synthesizes the available models on trade in services. Because trade data on services are scarce and have a number of weaknesses, rigorous econometric analysis has serious limits. The subsequent chapters of the book examine the determinants of trade in services through case studies of the experiences of countries with varying degrees of success. The book analyzes service export performance for the following countries: Brazil, Chile, the Arab Republic of Egypt, India, Kenya, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The countries were selected on the basis of their performance in global trade (especially trade in services), their regional role, and the availability of data and because they have consciously pursued policies to promote service exports.
Russian Federation: How Services Contribute to Competitiveness
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-09-19) van der Marel, Erik; Saez, Sebastian
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.
Streamlining Non-Tariff Measures : A Toolkit for Policy Makers
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012) Cadot, Olivier; Malouche, Mariem; Sáez, Sebastián
This volume is organized as follows. Chapter one discusses the newly revamped non-tariff measure (NTM) classification system, the data collection effort so far, and the key characteristics of the data. It also highlights the private-sector view that NTMs should support domestic firms' competitiveness across countries. Chapter two describes the analytics of an NTM review, step by step through the key questions, for example, is there a market failure, which market is affected, what are the costs of regulatory action vs. the risks of deregulation, and explains how to answer these questions and how to go about quantification when it is possible. Chapter three focuses on the institutional setup and key principles required to successfully pursue the streamlining of regulations. Since the mid-1990s, developed countries have introduced new regulatory approaches aimed at improving the quality of the decision-making process by enhancing both the analytical framework used by policy makers and the participation of interested parties in the regulatory process. Finally, chapters four and five provide practical examples of streamlining NTMs. Chapter four overviews selected experiences with tackling the trade regulatory agenda at both country and regional levels. Chapter five presents case studies on streamlining NTMs, including technical regulation and prohibition, particularly illustrating the analytics that may support the review process. Finally, NTM reviews should be seen as part of national competitiveness agendas rather than as concessions to trading partners. When NTMs are perceived by the domestic private sector as hampering access to key inputs, business regulatory reviews should naturally lead to NTM reviews. Joint use of the triangle of products will facilitate the adoption by governments of coherent national competitiveness strategies centered on the reduction of trade costs.
Let Workers Move : Using Bilateral Labor Agreements to Increase Trade in Services
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-06-13) Sáez, Sebastián; Sáez, Sebastián
Unlike the movement of capital, the movement of labor across countries remains highly restricted-despite the huge global returns to international labor mobility. According to one estimate, allowing the temporary migration of skilled and unskilled workers equivalent to 3 percent of the workforces of the world's developed countries would increase global welfare by more than US$156 billion a year. The objective of this book is to identify and discuss possible options for increasing services trade through the temporary movement of people, as a complement, not a substitute, to what can be achieved at the World Trade Organization (WTO), regional, and bilateral levels through trade agreement. Bilateral labor agreements (BLAs) could play a complementary role provided they are designed with the aim of promoting services trade through the temporary movement of people and fulfill specific requirements, including requirements that ensure temporariness. In general, such agreements have not been designed to promote trade in services; they have traditionally been tailored to facilitate or manage labor migration flows. The book is divided into two parts. Chapters one to three assess what has been achieved so far in trade agreements in terms of the temporary movement of services providers. They also discuss the pros and cons of using BLAs as possible channels for the expansion of trade in services. Chapter's four to eight use case studies to examine the viability and performance of BLAs as a complement to other efforts to liberalize the temporary movement of people. They are based on the experiences of sending and receiving countries in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. BLAs can be an attractive option for middle-income countries whose migratory flows are relatively small and do not generate fears in receiving countries. Source country governments should make credible commitments to ensure the temporary nature of these flows. In conjunction with the private sector, they should establish mechanisms for selecting the sectors to promote in target markets.
Regulatory Assessment Toolkit : A Practical Methodology for Assessing Regulation on Trade and Investment in Services
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-03-12) Molinuevo, Martín; Sáez, Sebastián
Regulatory Assessment Toolkit: A Practical Methodology for Assessing Regulation on Services Trade and Investment provides guidance on how to assess and reform the regulatory policies of service trade industries. The toolkit can help government officials evaluate whether their regulatory framework addresses market failures, achieves public interest goals in an efficient manner, and promotes the development of an efficient domestic services market. Depending on the circumstances and the needs of the authorities, the toolkit can serve different purposes, including supporting regulatory reform, improving regulatory governance, negotiating and implementing trade agreements, and streamlining regulations to attract foreign investment. The Regulatory Assessment Toolkit will be of particular interest to policy makers and government officials from regulatory bodies, experts at development banks and donor agencies, and academics and researchers in the field of economic regulation.