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Abstract
In Switzerland and in the European Union, the current regulation in services provision imposes restrictions of doing business, which creates barriers to entry and reduces competition leading to more expensive services. Applying SwissSER, a multisectoral, multiregional general equilibrium model including the structure necessary to support the analysis of services liberalization, we evaluate the relative economic impacts on the Swiss economy of liberalizing services in Switzerland and/or in the European Union as compared with the status quo. The simulation of the bilateral services liberalization results in an economic gain for Switzerland estimated at 2.2% of the value of Swiss consumption. More than half of these gains come from the contribution of efficiency gains associated with an increased number of services varieties. This highlights the key role of the modelling in determining the extent of the welfare gains.