There is a strong presumption among economists that domestic reforms are promoted by regionalism. Yet strong empirical evidence for this proposition is lacking. This paper examines both the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on this issue, drawing on the relevant economic,...

Australia and the United States signed a bilateral trade agreement in 2004. This paper analyses the provisions of the agreement, compares the provisions with other bilateral and multilateral agreements and comments on the modelling that the Australian Government used to estimate the likely...

Economic integration should not be an end in itself, but the outcome of domestic reforms that increase the general contestability of markets. The paper finds that for India, comprehensive domestic regulatory reform dominates as an integration strategy, while an ASEAN+6 PTA would fail to deliver...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first is to determine empirically whether there is a unique regional model of foreign direct investment (FDI) somewhere in the AsiaPacific region, driven by complex network behaviour of multinational corporations. The second is to determine empirically...

Two propositions appear to be gaining wide currency, given the revealed preference for preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the East Asian region and elsewhere. The first is that economic integration is a good way to promote economic growth. The second is that PTAs, particularly ones that go...

China’s overseas direct investment (ODI) in Australia has attracted adverse public reaction, similar to the reaction to Japanese investment in the late 1980s. Publicly aired concerns focus on Chinese ODI which is predominantly from state-owned enterprises and is perceived as a risk to...

This article identifies a number of examples of apparent lack of coherence in United States and European Union trade policies. They include the effect of preferential policies that lock in trade shares and inhibit growth promoting structural adjustment, biases in tariff structures, policies that...

This article identifies a number of examples of apparent lack of coherence in United States and European Union trade policies. They include the effect of preferential policies that lock in trade shares and inhibit growth promoting structural adjustment, biases in tariff structures, policies that...