Transportation infrastructure is a way for governments to achieve development goals by connecting peripheral areas to urban centers. This is particularly important in a country like China where income is highly unequally distributed across space. Yet understanding the gains from transportation...

This paper uses a general equilibrium trade framework to estimate the contribution of transport infrastructure to regional development. I apply the analysis to India, a country with a notoriously weak and congested transportation infrastructure. I first analyze the development effects of a...

While the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations are progressing slowly, China’s interest in regional trade agreements has intensified. This paper brings together our computable general equilibrium model estimates of the benefits of...

The formation of regional production networks (RPNs) is one of the most important drivers of growth in East and Southeast Asia. In view of slowdown in growth and even recession in advanced economies as a result of the adverse impact of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the ongoing European...

Trade regionalism, through regional cooperation and integration and in the form of regional trade agreements (RTAs), is rising globally, although Asia has jumped on the bandwagon only recently. Asian economic integration is the second-best approach which Asian countries unfortunately have to...

This paper examines the implications of cross-border component sourcing and production networks for trade competitiveness and welfare. Offshore sourcing of components in which it has comparative disadvantage, enables a country to enhance its comparative advantage in the final product. This...

Preferential trade agreements have spread throughout Asia. However, they have not facilitated intra-regional trade as much as their supporters have suggested. The complexities of rules of origin – part and parcel of all preferential agreements – have resulted in low utilization rates in...

This paper examines whether the renminbi (RMB) has supplanted the US dollar as the major anchor currency in the currency baskets of East Asian economies. First, we systematically demonstrate that existing techniques to address the problem of severe multicollinearity in estimations of the...

Preferential trade agreements are mushrooming in Asia. However, they have not been facilitating intra-regional trade as much as the supporters of these exclusive arrangements have suggested. The complexities of rules of origin - part and parcel of all preferential agreements - have resulted in...

This paper examines whether the renminbi (RMB) has supplanted the US dollar as the major anchor currency in the currency baskets of East Asian economies. It systematically demonstrates that existing techniques to address the problem of severe multicollinearity in estimations of the Frankel-Wei...