Do data policy restrictions inhibit trade in services?

This paper examines whether restrictive data policies are related to trade in services. The authors have collected comparable information on a variety of policy measures that regulate data for a wide group of countries for the years 2006–2016. This information is compiled in a weighted index that assesses the restrictiveness of these countries' data policies. They distinguish between policies regulating the cross-border movement of data and policies regulating the domestic use of data. Using econometric estimations, they show that strict data policies are negatively and significantly associated with imports of data-intense services. Therefore, countries applying restrictive data policies, in particular with respect to the cross-border flow of data, are likely to suffer from lower levels of services traded cross-border. The results of this analysis are significant and hold for various robustness checks.