The European Union (EU) represents a large and highly integrated bloc which contributed 19.4% of global GDP and over 30% of global exports in 2012. As of July 1, 2013 it consists of 28 member states. All of them belong to the customs union and the Single European Market (SEM) in which most...

Germany is a large source country for investment and technology transfer into India and Indian investments in Germany are also growing overtime. The two countries have investment complementarities and, therefore, there is scope to enhance bilateral investments flows. However, there are many...

We estimate the effect of RTAs on bilateral exports by means of a gravity model analyzing its sensitivity to different specifications and methods. RTAs generate a sizable positive effect. However, shifting to country-pair and time-varying fixed effects systematically reduces coefficients....

There is an emerging consensus among American politicians and many citizens that trade and globalization have undermined America's working class, resulting in a rise in U.S. populism. This view frequently targets the 2000 U.S. law that granted China “permanent normal trade relations” (PNTR)...

East Asia is a region of great global significance, currently accounting for around 30% of the global economy by most measures, e.g. production, trade, investment and finance. It has also become increasingly integrated in various ways. Integration at the micro-level has steadily progressed since...

East Asian trade agreements are often described as a complicated "noodle bowl," which shows links in the region as a snarled, overlapping, intertwined mass. But this is a misleading representation-Asia's regional agreements may in fact be creating an order of a different sort, building the...

The paper analyzes the international context in which negotiations between the European Union and United States on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership have been launched in July 2013. This context includes both the repeated failures of the Doha Round negotiations as well as the...

In this chapter, I review the literature on governments’ motivations for negotiating and joining international trade agreements. I discuss both normative explanations for trade agreements and explanations based on political-economy concerns. Most of the chapter focuses on the purpose of...

Covering major Asian economic blocs and dialogues, this study comprehensively reviews the true progress of "Asian" economic integration in comparison with the European Union (EU) and examines the factors contributing to the integration. The results show that comprehensive continent-wide economic...

Global institutions are understood as one of the best means of achieving inter-state cooperation. Yet this perspective omits the effects of institutional creation on non-members. We know that exclusion from trade agreements affects countries' economic cooperation. I show here that exclusion also...