The expansion of trade through centuries was pushed through a great extent by the unbundling of commodities from various factors that prevent them from being traded globally. The use of the steam engine in shipping, for example, ushered in the rapid expansion of 19th-century trade as transport cost was drastically reduced and countries realized interspatial cost differences across the Atlantic. The previous untradability of services, on the other hand, was broken by various dimensions of globalization that separated the simultaneous production and consumption of services. This unbundling rapidly boosted global trade in recent decades. However, growing developments and innovations in ICT are creating new bundling mechanisms. The essay will identify how these new bundling mechanisms have emerged and their implications on services trade and other dimensions of human development.
