The Asia Pacific region, and especially East Asia, has experienced rapid economic integration without the ‘hard politics' of legally binding economic and political treaties, unlike Europe where integration has been institution‐led. The ‘soft politics' and market‐led integration in East...

A frontier of potential trade is constructed for trade flows from a world trade matrix of trade determinants to compare East Asian trade performance with that of South Asia. The results suggest that East Asian trade, led by ASEAN, is outperforming the world while South Asia lags behind...

The economic rise of Japan in the 1980s was underpinned by commitment to catching up through domestic reform and accommodated externally within the framework of the postwar multilateral institutions like the GATT/WTO. Regional cooperative processes like APEC later complemented that framework,...

This article applies a game-theoretical analysis of institutions to the international institutional architecture, of which the G20 is treated as a central element. The article argues that international institutions such as the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund are best...

East Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into force in 2022 as the world’s largest free trade agreement. RCEP was concluded, signed and brought into force in the face of major international uncertainty and is a significant boost to the global trading system. RCEP...