After considering the background to the G20 summit meetings after the recent global economic and financial crisis, this paper aims to identify the trade agenda that represents Asia's concerns for the global and regional trading system. Asia, in particular East Asia, has played an important role...

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...

Based on scenarios produced by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the OECD Development Centre, the authors consider ways in which long-term Asian growth can be consolidated to the benefit of the global economy as a whole. Looking beyond current economic difficulties, Asian countries have...

This paper considers unit labor costs (ulcs), i.e., the ratio of the wage rate to labor productivity, as the indicator of competitiveness in the Philippines. It is shown that ulcs have an interpretation from the point of view of the functional distribution of income (i.e., the distribution of...