Many economists tend to be skeptical of the merits of Free-Trade Areas (FTAs) due to their second-best nature, while others support them under certain conditions, particularly as they allow for a more comprehensive treatment of trade- and investment-related issues than is currently possible...

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) presents strong potential to mold regional trade and investment patterns well into the future and to influence the direction of global economic cooperation at a challenging time. This paper evaluates the RCEP and estimates its potential...

Digital trade is upending the way consumers and companies do business. Digital trade and e-commerce have become major drivers of economic development by enhancing productivity and lowering costs of trade in goods. But government policies have been slow to catch up with the increasing importance...

This paper argues that the formation of regional integration frameworks can be best understood as a dominant state's attempt to create a preferred regional framework in which it can exercise exclusive influence. In this context, it is important to observe not only which countries are included in...

The future creation of a region-wide economic agreement in Asia has become the hot issue among trade policymakers in the region. The APEC 2010 Summit Statement clearly states that the members should pursue a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), building on various ongoing regional...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a regional free trade agreement (FTA) initiated by the United States (US) and is presently being negotiated among 11 countries. With the Philippines negotiating in many fronts at the global scene, such as its engagement in the ASEAN Economic Community and...

"Cast light and evil will go away." This is the basic idea of the transparency exercise of regional trade agreements (RTAs) at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Information sharing on RTAs is critically important because monitoring is impossible without it. In order for us to see not only good...

This Working Paper estimates the effects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) using a comprehensive, quantitative trade model, updating results reported in Petri, Plummer, and Zhai (2012) with recent data and information from the agreement. The new estimates suggest that the TPP will increase...