The role of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in East Asia’s recovery from the recent global financial and economic crisis highlighted the PRC’s growing role as an engine of growth for the region. From the viewpoint of the PRC, there are many potential gains from entering into free...

More than half of the World Trade Organization (WTO)-notified services trade agreements (STAs) in effect since 2008 have involved at least one (South or Southeast) Asian trading partner. Drawing on Baier and Bergstrand’s (2004) determinants of preferential trade agreements and using the World...

The 1997/98 Asian currency crisis has led a once high-flying East Asia to realize its vulnerability to external shocks. This realization has given strong impetus to greater economic integration among East Asian economies, with the ASEAN-Korea Free Trade Area (AKFTA) a case in point. This paper...

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...

This paper examines the impact of intra-Asia exchange rate volatility on intra-Asia trade in primary goods, intermediate goods, equipment goods, and consumption goods from 1980 to 2009. For Asia, the evidence shows that as intraregional exchange rate volatility increases, intraregional exports...

The barriers to trade in developing countries constitute one of the major obstacles to economic development and growth. This study aims at addressing the issues surrounding the prevalence of informal trade barriers in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. While it appears to be logical that the strongest...

This question is examined via a standard import specification augmented with differential and time-varying impacts of each component of aggregate demand: consumption, investment, government spending, and exports. Several important variables in explaining import demand such as credit conditions...

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...

This paper examines the implications of global production sharing for economic integration in East Asia, with emphasis on the behavior of trade flows in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis. While trade in parts and components and final assembly within production networks (“network...

Global production sharing—the breakup of a production process into vertically separated stages that are carried out in different countries—has become one of the defining characteristics of world trade over the past few decades. Any analysis of trade patterns or its determinants that ignores...