This study extends previous research by comparing banks across European Union (EU) accession and non-accession countries of central-eastern Europe in order to detect differences that perhaps have implications related to policy prescriptions for joining the EU. Using commercial banking data from...

This paper’s objective is twofold. Firstly, it presents the case for services-related policies in the current European Union (EU). The services economy is frequently misunderstood, due to old and new myths that stem from the classic economic tradition. These myths obscure the role of the...

The present work presents a view in the relatively recent history of the North American relationships, thing that underline in a way that NAFTA, according to the strong faith in the commerce and free investments. Here there are presented the stages of NAFTA formation, that is an agreement of...

“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...

Regional integration could be turned into a basic factor for economic growth if combined with a strong economic-development-oriented governmental strategy. The effects of regional integration can be maximized for countries stressing open trade as opposed to creating trade-diverting conditions,...

The creation of a region-wide economic agreement in Asia has become a hot topic among trade policymakers in the region. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 2010 Summit Statement clearly states that members should pursue a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) by building on...

This paper empirically investigates the firm-level relationship between the local input share and the number of used FTAs by employing the data on FTA utilization in Japanese affiliates in ASEAN. As a result, we do not find a robust linear relationship. However, affiliates using a large number...

The ongoing Euro crisis and the worse economic development in Europe compared to that in the United States is grounded in the delayed implementation of reforms of the banking sector. Whereas the leaks in economic governance of EMU have been fixed the banking sector is still not stabilized, even...

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have surged in a context of stalled multilateral trade negotiations. Their impact on trade have been well documented while scant attention have been paid to empirical studies exploring their heterogeneity in the scope of deep integration. We intend in this paper...

The Eastern Partnership, encompassing EU’s relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, was launched in May 2009 as an “eastern dimension” of the European Neighbourhood Policy. Its aims at supporting the reform process in the six former Soviet...