The paper shows that Asia's degree of financial integration, both with the world and within the region remains low by various measures. The paper also provides empirical evidence that greater financial integration can support economic rebalancing in statistically meaningful ways. The implication...

Is the recent proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) in Asia a healthy development, or runs the risk of turning into an unmanageable "noodle bowl" in the future? The goal of this paper is to shed some light on this question. The results show that membership in the Asian RTAs...

The member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation have set as a target the achievement of an economic union by 2020. Reaching this goal will require greater levels of monetary cooperation. How should this be achieved? Data from South Asia suggest that member states have...

This Working Paper brings together three papers prepared as background for discussions at the Second High-Level Conference on Asian Integration cohosted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the IMF on May 25, 2006. The first documents recent trends in the intraregional flow of goods and...

The paper evaluates the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) within the global structure of overlapping regional trade agreements (RTAs) using a modified gravity equation. First, it examines the effects of the Trade Liberalization Program which started in 2006. SAFTA would have a minor effect...

The paper characterizes trade exposure and regional integration in six ASEAN economies during 1997-2008. For this, the paper uses the 2000 Asian Input Output Tables which are extrapolated using National Income Accounts and COMTRADE data. On the demand side, the paper shows that the level and...

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the Asia-Pacific region have proliferated rapidly over the past five years and are creating a complex web of intersecting bilateral and regional trade agreements. This paper describes the proliferation of these PTAs, discusses their characteristics and...

The small states of the Asia and Pacific region face unique challenges in raising their growth potential and living standards relative to other small states due to their small populations, geographical isolation and dispersion, narrow export and production bases, exposure to shocks, and heavy...