Abstract
The growth of services as an economic activity is not an entirely new phenomenon. Even as early as 1900 the United States and the United Kingdom had more jobs in the services sector than in industry. But its expansion over the past quarter century has been most spectacular, marking a profound structural change in the global economy. Although the change has been particularly discernible in industrial countries, it would be wrong to assume that its significance is confined to them alone. The increasing ascendancy of services in the economy affects all countries, irrespective of the stage of development; and from all indications it will increasingly do so in the years to come.
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Notes and references
These figures are taken from GATT/WTO secretariat sources. For a more detailed discussion, and comparable figures for several years see Chapter 1. GATT figures for ‘commercial services’ are usually higher than those based on IMF balance of payments data due to (a) adjustments for the discrepancy between total reported imports and exports of shipment services; and (b) the GATT’s use of estimates based on growth trends in case of missing observations. See, in this connection, GATT, International Trade 90–91, II (Geneva: GATT 1992) p. 3.
Estimates based on IMF balance of payments data (covering countries reporting to it) reveal that the share of commercial services grew from 17 per cent in 1980 to more than 22 per cent in 1993, with an annual average growth of 7.7 per cent during the period, compared with 4.9 per cent for merchandise trade, in nominal terms. See World Bank, Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries (Washington DC: World Bank, 1995), p. 47.
It is worth noting that the statistics for commercial services and for merchandise trade are not directly comparable because (i) the country coverage of available data on commercial services is less comprehensive than that for merchandise trade, and (ii) the data on commercial services are subject to a significant over-all downward bias. See GATT, International Trade: Trends and Statistics 1994 (Geneva: GATT, 1994) p. 3 and Technical Notes.
WTO, ‘Overview of World Trade in 1995 and Outlook for 1996’. PRESS/44, March 1996.
The percentage figures for the individual countries concerned were as follows: Japan: 66 per cent (1993); Germany: 59 per cent (1992); USA: 51 per cent (1992); France: 47 per cent and the United Kingdom: 46 per cent (1991). UNCTAD, World Investment Report, 1994 (New York and Geneva: United Nations 1994) 1.7, p. 8.
United Nations, World Investment Report, 1992, (New York: 1992), p. 17.
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© 1997 International Organization for Migration
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Ghosh, B. (1997). Introduction. In: Gains from Global Linkages. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25422-4_1
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