The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is an ongoing free trade agreement involving ASEAN member states (AMSs) and six trading partners: Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. RCEP negotiations were launched in November 2012, and 18 rounds of negotiation...

Considering the third-country effects on bilateral incentives to sign a new PTA, we develop a theory-based empirical approach to access how a country's pre-existing PTAs affect her formation of a new PTA. Our empirical analysis using the theory-based measures of these effects confirms that a...