"The shape of economic integration in the global and regional economies--and the extent to which goods, services and factors of production move more or less freely across borders--depends not only upon underlying economic conditions but also upon politics. Whether integration is market-led, as...

We construct a new global commodity-level export dataset to analyze the persistence of export patterns as proxies of productive capabilities across the first and the current waves of globalization. We find that productive capabilities are path-dependent and historical capabilities are powerful...

Does what you exported matter? We build a new global commodity-level export database for the previous era of globalization and find persistence in productive capabilities proxied by economic complexity, export diversification, and sophistication across a century. We also show that productive...

The Asia Pacific region, and especially East Asia, has experienced rapid economic integration without the ‘hard politics' of legally binding economic and political treaties, unlike Europe where integration has been institution‐led. The ‘soft politics' and market‐led integration in East...

This paper measures the integration of the East Asian and South Asian economies in the global economy and their potential for regional and global economic integration through merchandise trade. East Asian economies are shown to be achieving much more of their potential trade than South Asian...