What kind of technical assistance and capacity building benefits do developing countries enjoy if they sign a free trade agreement (FTA) with developed countries? This is a frequently asked question among developing country officials involved in FTA policymaking. While we tend to normatively...

This paper attempts to identify structural constraints to growth and exports within Cambodia’s key industries and to consider the policy actions needed to reduce obstacles to trade. The paper places special emphasis on Cambodia’s exports to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), given the...

This paper assesses the quality of Cambodia’s export and import statistics by comparing them with the statistics of its trade partners. The paper identifies inaccuracies in trade statistics caused by two types of misclassifications: commodity misclassification and direction misclassification....

As tariffs are increasingly being reduced, trade economists and policymakers have begun to emphasize the importance of reducing non-tariff trade costs to facilitate international trade flows. However, the measurement of trade costs and transport costs, in particular, is not an easy task. For...

In understanding the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) in Asia since 2000, it is important to distinguish between two types of FTAs in terms of a legal basis on either General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article XXIV or the Enabling Clause. The latter provision can be used...

There is a general consensus that trade between East Asia and South America is becoming increasingly important. However, we know little about the actual dynamic development of this inter-regional trade. This paper examines whether the trend of East Asia–South America trade is a general...

On the one hand, trade in tertiary education is highly regulated; on the other hand, it is a considerably liberalized area of services. This is especially true in the case of Mode 3 of international services trade, namely oversea campuses. In the case of Japan, foreign universities are/were free...

In this paper, we will examine the level of services trade integration in Asia in comparison with Europe and North America. The main empirical findings of this paper are that (i) the regional bias of services trade in Asia is as high or higher than in Europe and North America; (ii) in Asia, the...

There has been much confusion, rather than debate, on the use of free trade agreements (FTAs). Unfortunately, a large part of the confusion is caused by the absence of consensus on the meaning of key terms such as the "utilization rate" and "usage rate" of FTAs, and the lack of knowledge on...

"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...