Trade in services is different because it involves a range of cross-border transaction including IT services, transportation services, tourism services, local offices providing banking, insurance, and communications services, and the short-run movement of service workers in these industries.

However, it has also been noted that trade in services is more complicated than trade in goods because the former typically involves movements of knowledge, people and capital. Previous contributions ( here and here) focused on trade in goods and services, concluding that distance still matters for trade in goods, but possibly less so for services, and that services, therefore, represent a more promising route to diversification. This post is the third in a series analysing the prospects for trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) diversification, with a particular focus on the UK and Canada in the age of Brexit. Daniel Shapiro, Saul Estrin, Christine Cote, Klaus Meyer, and Jing Li examine the nature of trade in services using ideas developed in the international business and economic geography literature to explore the interrelationships among multinational enterprises, global value chains and cities.

Global cities ranking 2018