The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are under scrutiny for their engagement in production networks following recent emphasis on increasing intra-regional trade, rebalancing, and inclusive growth in Asia. Using a data set covering 5,900 firms in...

The performance of the Philippine automotive industry has steadily improved after the Asian crisis. However, relative to the performance of the automotive industry in other countries, the automotive sector in the country has languished. To understand the challenges being faced by the automotive...

The development of the Philippine automotive parts and components sector is critical to the automotive assembly industry. The availability of competitive parts and components that are locally manufactured can significantly contribute to boost the competitiveness of the assembly sector. Given the...

Globalisation and the ageing of the work force represent a dual challenge for enterprises. The first exerts pressure on production costs in order to stay competitive, the second raises production costs as the productivity of workers tends to decline after a certain age, particularly for...

The East Asian region is a major global economic player, given its economic size and potential. As such, Regional Economic Integration in East Asia could be considered as an important building bloc toward integration of the Asia-Pacific region. East Asia has made significant progress in creating...

Trade and financial policies in ASEAN-member countries have contributed to the goal of economic integration. One important feature of this process is the need to narrow the development gap in the region in order to make economic integration more effective and meaningful. This paper examines the...

This paper examines the prospect of realizing regional economic integration via the mechanism of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). The FTAAP initiative represents a politically ambitious, high potential benefit option for achieving Asian regional integration. Among its desirable...

Regional economic integration through logistics, information network and connectivity improvement can increase the 'virtual size' of an economy as trade with neighboring countries increases. This leads to substantial benefits from scale, network, coordination and agglomeration economies. As is...