Feedback mechanisms are the key to sequencing when it comes to regional integration; can mean that today's policy or institution alters the political-economy landscape in a way that makes it politically optimal for future governments to take further steps toward integration - even when these...

'This unique compilation of essays addresses a core political economy question: how do market forces and trade regulation interact? Its fresh Asian perspective offers a much-needed contribution to our understanding of how treaty-based regional and bilateral economic integration is driven by the...

The stumbling-bloc argument asserts that regionalism hinders MFN tariff cutting. If this was of first-order importance over previous decades, we should detect this in the levels of the tariffs. Using tariff line data for 23 large trading nations we find that MFN and PTA tariffs are complements,...

Based on theoretical distinctions suggested by the heterogeneous firms trade model and the quality heterogeneous firms trade model, we classify exports at the HS 6-digit level as being characterised by either quality or price competition. We find a high proportions of quality-competition goods...

This paper explores the growth implications of regional integration. From the theory, it identifies the ‘footprints’ that such growth should leave in the data. It then checks the data on the four poor EU nations for such footprints. Prima facie evidence for Ireland, Portugal and Spain...