Selected international trade in services and the development of small economies: Some evidence from the Caribbean Basin.

摘要

International trade in services is expanding its share of world trade at (at least) a similar pace to that of goods. Although on the average, developed countries are major producers and consumers of services, trade in services is important, economically, at all levels of development. Conventional wisdom has assumed that the key to development lies in industrialization by using labor intensive technology. This argument ignores the fact that most developing countries are small in population. Small population means that human resources and skills are likely to be scarce, and facilities for the development of human resources may be highly limited compared with large countries. Under these circumstances it is likely that only sectors, such as services, that are not generally subject to increasing returns to scale can provide a long-term escape route for small developing countries with limited resources.; In examining past studies, involving service industries, it was found that these studies had treated developing countries in the same way they treated the industrialized ones. While the assumptions under which the model of services can be applied to industrialized countries are valid, these assumptions are not necessarily valid when applying the same model to developing countries. In this study, a more comprehensive model has been introduced to be applied to developing countries.; The proposed study investigates the service sector as a tool for economic growth in small developing countries in order to identify those services, development of which would be beneficial for economic growth in developing countries. It may be possible to evaluate which services should become the target of development policies.