Essays on trade in services

Trade in services represents the future of international trade. Services constitute the most important component of domestic production both in terms of aggregate values and number of firms. They are the fastest growing component of international trade of the last fifteen years and their share in total world trade has increased from 15% to more than 25%. Despite the increasing importance of trade in services, the literature explored almost exclusively trade in goods. This thesis provides new comprehensive evidence on this relatively new form of trade using firm-level data. The first chapter provides a descriptive comparison of trade in goods and trade in services to understand whether current theoretical frameworks can represent a good fit for trade in services. The second chapter analyzes the link between the changes in the production process and the increase in the number of firms trading services. The third chapter shows that demand played a mayor role in the peculiar resilience of services during the 2008-2009 crisis. Finally, talking about services means also talking about the movement of people. That is why chapter four is devoted to migration issues and it analyzes the effect of the quality of institutions on the net balance of migrants.