This article analyses the importance of international commercial service transactions relating to both trade and investment, which form an essential element of analyzing production fragmentation and economic integration in Asia. Following an aggregative analysis the authors discusses data...

Regional economic integration agreements are considered to be important policy mechanisms to address regional developmental asymmetries. The Asian reality is characterized by developmental asymmetries across countries on the one hand and a lack of comprehensive pan-Asian formal regional economic...

Lack of full regional connectivity is one of the major constraints hindering regional growth and integration in Asia, as well as with the rest of the world. One of the conclusions of this paper is that Asia must strengthen its physical connectivity to make it a conduit for international trade...

In order to advance regional integration in East Asia, there needs to be a rapid expansion of FTAs. The obstacles in promotion of FTAs need to be resolved. Some of the features in realising FTAs are: Strong political leadership which keeps Japan's future firmly in mind; strong support from public;...

A lively debate is taking place over the impact of free trade agreements (FTAs) on East Asia's business between those who view the agreements as a harmful Asian "noodle bowl"—i.e., overlapping regional trade agreements—of trade deals and others who see net beneficial effects in...

Taking into account the latest data of exports of textiles and clothing to the European Union from South Asia and China, a year-end assessment of the impact of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) introduced by the EU in January last. Despite loss of GSP benefit on textiles, Indian...

Policy makers are particularly concerned about the extent and speed of exchange rate pass-through into domestic prices. However, in recent times there seems to be a growing degree of disconnect between exchange rate changes and domestic consumer prices in general, or, for that matter, even into...

The September 2007 annual summit of APEC to be hosted by Australia will witness the ending of the decade long moratorium on membership. A major anomaly of the APEC is that while the three largest economies in the world in terms of PPP GDP are members (US, China and Japan), the fourth largest...

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) will be an integral and significant part of global financial and capital markets even in the medium term. It is important for India to put in place domestic safeguards against the investments by the SWF in order to retain technological and policy autonomy, and...

The paper reviews the experience of select countries - both advanced and emerging markets - in regard to capital account liberalisation (CAL). The advanced countries' experience with regard to CAL is analysed with special focus on the sequencing of CAL. The move towards CAL by many of the...