This paper compares the economic integration processes of the European Union and the East Asian nations and comments on the possible reciprocal lessons, if any, that can be drawn in order to smooth the future paths of the two groups. On the EU side, institutions, structural policies, and the...

This paper surveys recent literature on the design of international institutions and applies the insights from it to the prospects for regional economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. The political and economic heterogeneity of the region has served the process of regional economic...

Expanding trade with East Asia’s "Big Three" economic giants - the People's Republic of China (PRC), Japan, and the Republic of Korea - offers a new potential source of growth for ASEAN in the post-global-crisis period. In fact, ASEAN has been actively pursuing trade liberalization with the...

Why is Asia lagging behind other regions in creating regional judicial institutions? What lessons from the operation of such institutions elsewhere could be valuable to Asian regional economic integration? I show that Asian states are not unusually averse to refer inter-state disputes over...

A common view holds that the trend toward Asian financial regionalism is a relatively new phenomenon that became significant after the Asian financial crisis of 1997/98. This paper challenges this view by exploring and analyzing financial regionalist projects in Asia throughout the 1990s. As...

When debating the pros and cons of economic regionalism, haven't we focused enough on trade in goods at the expense of services? This article argues that regionalism is certainly a building block, not a stumbling block to a multilateral trading system, using the services liberalization scheme of...

As East Asia becomes increasingly integrated through market-driven trade and FDI activities, free trade agreements (FTAs) are proliferating. Consolidation of multiple and overlapping FTAs into a single East Asian FTA can help mitigate the harmful noodle bowl effects of different or competing...

The paper argues that East Asian regionalism is fragile because (i) each nation's industrial competitiveness depends on the smooth functioning of "Factory Asia" - in particular for intraregional trade; (ii) the unilateral tariff-cutting that created Factory Asia is not subject to WTO discipline...

Many economists tend to be skeptical of the merits of Free-Trade Areas (FTAs) due to their second-best nature, while others support them under certain conditions, particularly as they allow for a more comprehensive treatment of trade- and investment-related issues than is currently possible...