Services are a new force for innovation, trade, and growth in East Asia and Pacific. The dramatic diffusion of digital technologies and partial policy reforms in services--from finance, communication, and transport to retail, health, and education--is transforming these economies.

The result is higher productivity and changing jobs in the services sector, as well as in the manufacturing sectors that use these services.

A region that has thrived through openness to trade and investment in manufacturing still maintains innovation-inhibiting barriers to entry and competition in key services sectors.

'Services Unbound: Digital Technologies and Policy Reform in East Asia and Pacific' makes the case for deeper domestic reforms and greater international cooperation to unleash a virtuous cycle of increased economic opportunity and enhanced human capacity that would power development in the region.

Report by the World Bank