Free trade agreements (FTAs) have become a prominent feature of the multilateral trading system and an important instrument of trade policy for members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The proliferation of FTAs is the result of a number of factors, from the economic to the political. East...

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a mechanism through which countries can upgrade connectivity-related infrastructure, including through cross-border projects, complementing traditional sources of finance. An overarching goal of the BRI is to reduce trade costs between China and partner...

Since about a decade, we have seen a surge in interest as well as in the use of services preferentialism and unilateral services regulations. This paper provides an economic explanation of services regulation and services preferentialism, including their interaction. The paper derives hypotheses...

In all the regions of the contemporary world - including Asia - there is a growing trend in market consolidation through regional collaboration in the form of bilateral and regional trade agreements. Regional cooperation and integration can facilitate the way for expanding markets and creating...

The results highlight the conflicting interests of countries - to stabilize exchange rates or to keep the option of exchange rate depreciation in order to maintain competitiveness of domestic tradable producers. With deepening integration in East Asia, however, the desire for exchange rate...

This paper investigates and analyzes the present status, potential, and prospects of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) free trade agreements (FTAs). It begins with a review of the historical evolution of ASEAN FTAs, which captures the achievements of the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement...

This paper attempts to quantify the impact of economic policy uncertainty on overall trade and trade linked to global value chains. Using new data on policy uncertainty for 18 countries and 24 years, it finds a statistically significant negative impact of policy uncertainty on overall trade...

This paper examines the determinants and trade effects of the South Asian Preferential Trading Arrangement (SAPTA) using empirical methods. An empirical specification of the gravity model is developed to analyze the determinants of trade flows for the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA)...

The Americas have been a key driver of regional trade agreements (RTAs) since the 1990s. This study considers the effect of these agreements on trade liberalization, and the lessons that this offers for other parts of the world, notably Asia. It finds broad geographical coverage of RTAs in the...

Since the early 1990s, regional trade agreements (RTAs) covering trade in services have proliferated, with 95 RTAs on services notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO) under Article V of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), as of June 2011. This paper discusses how RTAs...