In this paper we first document the growing importance of intra-East Asian trade in parts and components and capital goods facilitated by foreign direct investment (FDI). Japanese direct investment has a stronger influence on intra-East Asian trade relative to FDI from France and Germany. It is...

This paper examines the qualitative impact and the degree of effectiveness of several labor market policies when domestic union’s wage response and economic integration are explicitly taken into account. The employment policies considered include payroll tax cuts, unemployment benefits cuts,...

The stumbling-bloc argument asserts that regionalism hinders MFN tariff cutting. If this was of first-order importance over previous decades, we should detect this in the levels of the tariffs. Using tariff line data for 23 large trading nations we find that MFN and PTA tariffs are complements,...

This paper explores the growth implications of regional integration. From the theory, it identifies the ‘footprints’ that such growth should leave in the data. It then checks the data on the four poor EU nations for such footprints. Prima facie evidence for Ireland, Portugal and Spain...