The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a community of more than 600 million people living in ten countries in one of the most dynamic regions of the world. Consistent with this, ASEAN's share of world GDP and world trade has sharply increased over the past decades. In 2003,...

Although economic linkages between South Asia and Southeast Asia have been strengthened over the past decade, integration between these two regions remains limited. Can new approaches to regional integration help revitalize trade and economic links between South Asia and Southeast Asia This...

"This paper examines the effect of regionalism on unilateral trade liberalization using industry-level data on applied most-favored nation tariffs and bilateral preferences for ten Latin American countries from 1990 to 2001. The findings show that preferential tariff reduction in a given sector...

"The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region's trade performance over the past two decades has been disappointing. Efforts to boost trade through a plethora of regional trade agreements (RTAs) are underway. This study examines the potential contribution of regional trade agreements, as well...

How firms react to a given shock may depend on the degree to which rivals are present and on whether potentially viable entrants to that market exist. A preferred supplier market presence and threat of entry lessen a nonmember country's price reaction to most-favored-nation trade liberalization...

"In many developing countries, achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 will require significant increases in expenditures on social services and in foreign assistance. It will also require careful planning of the sector allocation and sequencing of public spending. Especially...

The effects of the global economic slowdown on peoples' employment and earnings are at the core of its social impacts, manifested largely through increased job uncertainties and reduced worker earnings in crisis-affected sectors, as opposed to widespread open unemployment. The global economic...

As developing economies continue to mature and enter the next phase of reforms, labor market issues and key policy instruments such as the minimum wage increasingly come to the forefront. Increased globalization and wider competition compel countries to make labor markets more flexible so as not...

This report is part of a project being jointly conducted by the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat, and United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). It aims to...