This paper examines the changing relationship between trade policy, production networks, and economic growth in Asia. It traces East Asia’s rise to the coveted “Factory Asia” league with rapid growth over several decades through trade policy anchored on outward-oriented industrialization...

Motivated by the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) in Asia over the last decade, this paper studies the challenges faced by the Asian “noodle bowl”—overlapping, multiple trade rules, regulations, and standards in Asia—in the process of regional and global trade integration....

Infrastructure connectivity in Northeast Asia—comprising the northeastern People’s Republic of China, Japan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea, Mongolia, and the Russian Far East—has been hindered by limited intergovernmental cooperation. The paper finds...

With closer regional integration there is increasing interest within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and on the part of ASEAN's dialogue partners in the potential gains of closer connections between Southeast Asia and South Asia. The strategic positions of India, Myanmar, and...

There is an urgent need to mainstream the key challenges of climate change into sector and development planning and decision making processes to create sustainable long-term development. Empirical results in this study emphasize that more caution is needed in directing overseas development aid...

This paper examines the complementary and competitive roles of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Asia given the backdrop of a changing world in which development priorities and challenges are changing rapidly and the rapid expansion of financial flows to developing countries...

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are an innovative institutional model to channel financing and knowledge to developing countries. In Latin America, the balance of forces between competition and collaboration among MDBs and other sources of development finance have formed a system that is...

Multilateral development finance is at a critical juncture. In the past 70 years, it has developed through four distinct stages. The Bretton Woods conference established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1944 to finance post-war reconstruction and stabilize the global...

In May 2013 the ASEAN+6 countries began to negotiate the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The objective of this paper is to analyze the feasibility of constructing such a region-wide agreement and to examine ways to multilateralize it. The paper first reviews free trade...

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was set up in 2003 with the objectives of creating a single market and production base, enhancing equitable economic development as well as facilitating the integration into the global economy. The AEC involves liberalization and facilitation of trade in goods,...