The government has implemented substantial trade and investment policy reforms during the last two decades following a three-track approach involving unilateral, regional and multilateral modalities towards freer trade and investment. The reforms resulted to improvements in domestic resource...

East Asia has been caught with regionalism in recent years. There has been a proliferation of bilateral and regional trading arrangement initiatives across the region. Long known for their support to the multilateral framework under the WTO, the leading economies in the region (Japan, South...

One result of the 1997 East Asian financial crisis was greater awareness of the need for closer financial and monetary cooperation. This paper makes an inventory of the institutional developments in this area in East Asia, with emphasis on Southeast Asia. The major issues that must resolve...

Trade with nontraditional and distant markets has always been regarded as worth exploring in an effort to increase market shares amidst the downside effects of globalization and regional trade cooperation. While globalization processes paved the way for increased competition and opening up of...

Going by the statements of the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan's top priority with regards to regional and bilateral economic partnerships (EPA) is to carryout the framework of its EPA with ASEAN by 2012 or earlier. It must be stressed that Japan is economically interested in the whole...

The paper discusses the ASEAN + 3 integration in the context of the literature on hub-and-spoke regionalism. It argues that, provided proper rules of origin are incorporated, the different bilateral arrangements between ASEAN countries and each of the three East Asian economies are building...

Food security remains a major concern among the APEC member economies. A simple and crude exercise shows that the region collectively could supply each member economy's demands for rice, maize and wheat. Thus, there is a potential role for enhanced intra-APEC agricultural trade to address food...

More recently, considerable attention has been given to financial regional integration and cooperation, which intensified in the wake of the East Asian financial crisis. Thus, a number of regional initiatives, such as development of regional bond market and credit rating agencies, among others,...

Intraregional trade and investment among the ASEAN+3 countries - and the entire East Asia - has been progressing at a robust pace over the past 25 years. The process of economic integration could be aptly described as "regionalization" or market-driven integration. In contrast, the European...

The paper aims to add to the understanding of the issues and suggests a framework to move toward the use of best practice in ROOs. Rules of origin (ROO), originally designed as uncontroversial and neutral devise for authentication and statistical purposes, have evolved over time to accommodate...