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.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 18

Trade Dimensions of Logistics Services : A Proposal for Trade Agreements

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01) Kunaka, Charles ; Mustra, Monica Alina ; Saez, Sebastian

Services have a direct impact on the competitiveness of the goods sector. This paper illustrates the importance of logistics services, their trade dimension, and how regulatory issues act as perhaps one of the most significant barriers to competitiveness. The paper discusses recent developments and the role and benefits of logistics services and argues that from a trade agreement standpoint, logistics is a network industry that ultimately provides one service to a final client. It analyzes logistics services from a services trade perspective and proposes that trade agreements should ensure access to and use of the infrastructure required to provide these services recognizing their interconnectedness. The paper offers suggestions on additional policies World Trade Organization members, and countries negotiating services agreements regionally or bilaterally, could follow in order to fully exploit the opportunities provided by logistics services. Local regulations and complementary policies in areas such as trade facilitation will always remain important.
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.
Keeping Animal Spirits Asleep : The Case of Chile

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-05) Sáez, Sebastián

Chilean legislation is quite conservative, especially compared with international practice. However, its application has not been free of criticism, and it proved necessary to seek mechanisms that combine limitations set forth in the GATT/WTO regulations and others self-imposed by Chilean law. Legislation on antidumping measures was introduced in Chile in 1992. The Distortions Commission has recommended and the President has adopted such measures on just six occasions, of which two correspond to extensions of existing measures. Legislation on safeguard measures was introduced in 1999. In the 1999-2002 period, seven safeguard measures were adopted. The traditional agricultural sector was the main user of the measures, and no measure was in place for more than 12 months. The context in which the Commission was created in 1981 and the type of measures adopted by this entity support the idea that the objective of the Commission was to alleviate the political pressures generated by the difficult economic situation rather than to correct problems originated by the price distortions of goods. In the second half of the 1980s, the Commission supported the liberalization process that started in 1985. Adopting safeguard legislation in 1999 helped to gain approval of further tariff reductions from 11 percent to 6 percent. During the decade of the 1990s and until the present day, the philosophy of minimal use to further liberalization has been maintained. The legislation has undergone modifications to adjust the instruments used to support the economic opening and international commitments.
Uncovering Developing Countries’ Performance in Trade in Services

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-11) Saez, Sebastian ; Goswami, Arti Grover

Services play a broad and strategic role in the economy. Trade in services has been expanding rapidly because technological improvements have reduced the cost of cross-border exchange from infinity to virtually zero, thereby allowing for new export activities. Trade in services, particularly business services, has become an element of export diversification for many developing countries. Besides traditional activities such as tourism, activities such as health and information and communication services are among the most successful services exports. This note focuses on the determinants of trade in services for developing countries.
Managing Trade Policy During the Economic Crisis

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-07) Saez, Sebastian

The global economic crisis has triggered rapid responses by governments worldwide to counteract its domestic effects, through fiscal stimulus packages, expansionary monetary policies, and financial bailouts. Ad hoc trade policy measures are increasingly being put in place. All countries share the responsibility of preserving a stable and predictable trade policy environment. To this end, trade policies must contribute to maintaining an open trading system consistent with World Trade Organization (WTO) principles. With the sharp decline in global merchandise trade volumes, expected to fall by 9 percent in 2009, countries have resorted to an array of measures to counter the detrimental effects of the crisis on their respective economies. Because this decline is a consequence of a deterioration of global demand, trade measures are not an effective response to this problem. On the contrary, policies that contribute to an open and stable trading system are the best policy option for the world community, especially in the current context.
The Increasing Importance of Developing Countries in Trade in Services

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-06) Sáez, Sebastián

Services play a broad and strategic role in the economy. The new focus in services arises because they have become increasingly tradable, allowing for the emergence of new and improved export activities. Trade in services, particularly business services, has become a dynamic component of trade and an alternative for export diversification for many developing countries. Besides traditional activities (such as tourism), health, information technology, and communication services are among the most successful service exports. Developing countries seem to follow different policy approaches to trade in services, and diverse trade patterns appear to emerge. What determines the participation of a developing country in trade in services? And what is the role of international negotiations?
Valuing Services in Trade : A Toolkit for Competitiveness Diagnostics

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014) Sáez, Sebastián ; Taglioni, Daria ; van der Marel, Erik ; Hollweg, Claire H. ; Zavacka, Veronika

The Service Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic (STDC) Toolkit is part of a larger agenda of trade competitiveness work developed by the World Bank’s International Trade Unit in recent years. Services are a key input in countries’ trade competitiveness, as well as a new source of trade diversification, making it critical to understand what factors and main constraints matter most for services competitiveness. The Toolkit provides a framework, guidelines, and set of practical tools to conduct a thorough analysis and diagnostic of trade competitiveness in the services sector with a methodology that sheds light on a country’s ability both to export services and improve its export performance through policy change. This Toolkit is designed to be used in a modular way. Either a full country diagnostic can be undertaken or various parts of the toolkit can be used to address specific questions of interest, whether they pertain to existing services performance, the potential for expansion and growth in services trade, or policy options to increase competitiveness in services trade. The output of an STCD can be used to assess either the overall performance of a country’s services sector or the performance of individual sub-sectors. This Toolkit complements the analytical framework for trade in goods provided by the Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic Toolkit (World Bank, 2012), and allows policymakers and experts in developing countries to better integrate services into their overall trade strategies. In addition, it will also be of interest to international organizations and development practitioners in both policymaking institutions and academia.
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.
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.
Russian Federation: How Services Contribute to Competitiveness

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-09-19) Saez, Sebastian ; van der Marel, Erik

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.