This paper provides an account of the resort in recent years by governments in the Asia Pacific region to discrimination against foreign commercial interests. As in previous systemic economic crises, policymakers altered the mix of discriminatory policies employed. This time around governments...

More recently, considerable attention has been given to financial regional integration and cooperation, which intensified in the wake of the East Asian financial crisis. Thus, a number of regional initiatives, such as development of regional bond market and credit rating agencies, among others,...

This is the season for regional-integration initiatives in Asia. There is talk of region-wide FTAs, and there are east-Asian initiatives on financial and monetary cooperation. But grand visions for Asian regional blocs are not achievable. Regional economic integration is most developed in east...

What if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is not a doomed initiative - and what if it will actually make inroads into modern trade problems? The Asia-Pacific region is now the world's centre of economic gravity holding an increasing share of world production and promising a rapid turn into the...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement seems to have reached a crossroads: it could either be a building block toward achieving economic integration in Asia and the Pacific, or trigger the formation of two large trade blocs which will work independently of one another. When the Government...

The EAC is on the verge of establishing a customs union. But this is accompanied by fears that the Customs Union would lead to trade imbalances among the Partner States, which would create serious problems for the proper functioning of the Customs Union itself. To mitigate these problems the...

In Africa there has been an immense effort in the past, continuing into the present, to unite politically and to build numerous economic integration areas. In this paper we discuss the reasons for the existence of this phenomenon in Africa which we call the drive to political and economic...

Drawing on recent work on the creation and breakup of countries, this paper examines the impact of economic and political integration on the vertical government structure. It argues that by increasing the market size and the benefits from the decentralized provision of public goods, integration...

Risks that are associated with an uncertain trading world have been dealt with using two different techniques in the literature: defensive, or insurance approaches, and preventive, or self-protection approaches. Much of the earlier work was emphasized by security issues but with the end of the...

While the regional economic integration encompassing the former Soviet Union (FSU) transpires to be inefficient, there appears to be a stronger interest in regionalism in smaller groups of more homogenous and geographically connected countries of the region, specifically, Central Asia. Using a...