ABSTRACT
As with most work on services industries, the data present serious problems. Clearly there is in every economy a very large number of firms producing goods and services whose ability to successfully confront world market competition is heavily influenced by the availability - or lack thereof - of competitively priced producer service inputs. The emphasis on the importance of producer services to efficient production makes it all the more difficult to understand the authors' curt dismissal of the importance of international trade in services. The extent to which their general approach to the issue differs from that of most other analysts, and of the officials engaged in the Group of Negotiations on Services. Clearly the world at large has adopted a much wider definition than the authors of which activities fall under the heading of "trade in services".
