Europe and Asia followed very different paths to economic integration after 1945. By 2000, an economic union with free movement of goods and factors of production and a common currency linked much of Europe. Meanwhile, effective economic integration agreements were absent from Asia, although...

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...

The Asia Pacific region was characterized in the second half of the twentieth century by an absence of regional trading arrangements. The situations changed after 2000, raising questions of sequencing and of the boundaries of the region. This paper argues that the proliferation of regional and...