Tradability of Services: The Role of Identity Maintenance

This contribution is motivated by two observations that do not seem to have been seen in conjunction up to now. On the one hand, when the “French exception” was inserted in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), this was motivated by the fear that imports especially of cultural services would undermine a country’s identity. On the other hand, while services presently account for up to 70% of the...