World trade is increasingly being dominated by preferential trade agreements that have taken precedence over multilateral trade negotiations. Within Asia and the Pacific an explosion of bilateral deals is taking place that seems likely to produce a tangle of hub-spoke trade blocs centered on...

This paper first examines the rapid growth and changing composition of manufactured exports in Indonesia and Thailand, highlighting the rapid growth of office and computer machinery and electric machinery, somewhat slower growth of non-electric and transportation machinery, as well as the low...

The decline in world trade volume in 2009 was the worst since the Great Depression. The United States (US) spread the global recession as a major source of external demand. US import and export data are examined to understand the repercussions, particularly for developing economies divided into...

This book is based on the premise that Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) in the Asia-Pacific significantly impact on the material progress of the peoples of this region. These impacts – in terms of the benefits and costs associated with RTAs – will vary greatly from country to...

This article finds that the export demand effect of external shocks had the strongest impact on the USSR. The effect was second largest in China and Hungary, and smallest in the NICs. The USSR responded to external shocks in a manner typical of the traditional centrally-planned economy. It was...

This paper examines the structure and direction of developing Asia's trade over the past two decades. The impacts on developing Asia of the economic slowdown in 2009–2010 in high-income countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes the European...

World trade volume is in retreat for the first time in more than two decades and the contraction is on a scale not seen since the global recession following the second oil shock of 1979–1980. The United States (US) is at the epicenter of the crisis and is a major source of external demand for...