From 1948 to 1994, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Secretariat received 124 indications of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) relating to the trade in goods, and since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, more than 240 additional RTAs (covering trade in...

The Asia-Pacific region is not typically seen as one geographic or socio-economic space. Yet, 58 regional economies occupying the space of 28 million square kilometers from Turkey in the West, Russian Federation in the North, French Polynesia in the East and New Zealand in the South belong to...

The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a free trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim countries whose joint gross domestic products (GDPs) account for 36 percent of world GDP and whose mutual trade accounts for approximately 24 percent of world trade. As for most proposed free trade...

When the Pacific Islands Forum was established in 1971, regional economic integration was high on the policy agenda. Over the four decades since, a political commitment to regional integration has waxed and waned. This paper explores past and present prospects for economic cooperation through...