During the past few decades, the landscape of the world economy has changed. New trade patterns reflect the globalization of the supply chain and intra-industry trade, and increasing flows between neighboring countries and trading blocs with similar factor endowments. Similarly, the approach to...

International trade has played an essential role in Asia's remarkable growth, development, and integration in recent decades. Infrastructure, both hard and soft, has played an integral part in facilitating that trade, primarily through reducing the associated transaction costs. Regional...

Until now, the value of inter-country trade within South Asian nations has been low. While similarities in the exports profiles can be seen as a reason for this low value of trade, it might not be a valid one, especially given the presence of growing South Asian income. The intraindustry trade...

Pacific economies are confronted with several structural constraints that limit their economic growth, most importantly their small size and remoteness from major world markets. In this paper we study the importance of transport connectivity for Pacific economies when participating in the world...

The development of transport corridors and better trade facilitation enhance cross-border trade flows and stimulate economic integration via stronger regional cooperation. Against this backdrop, this paper intends to analyze the effect of trade facilitation indicators (TFIs) on trade flows in...

The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), known as the Middle Corridor, is a multilateral institutional development linking the containerized rail freight transport networks of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the European Union through the economies of Central Asia, the...

Trade costs incorporate the cost of transportation along with tariffs, nontariff measures, insurance, distribution costs, infrastructure quality, and cross-border connectivity. The high costs of trade make the production process slow and costly, which forces international trade flows to...

Regional economic integration is back in vogue following the "stumble" in the Doha Round in July 2008. Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are driving this trend in Asia and the Pacific as well as in Central and South America, and the sheer volume of PTAs is striking. In the 1990s there were...

Although a latecomer, economically important Asia has emerged at the forefront of global free trade agreement (FTA) activity. This has sparked concerns about the negative effects of Asian FTAs, including the "noodle bowl" problem. Amid slow progress in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha...

In this paper, we analyzed key aspects of the changing economic relationship between the European Union (EU) and Asia, and explored the potential economic ramifications of deeper EU-Asian economic cooperation. We also investigated the possible costs to the EU of remaining "disengaged" from the...