The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) presents strong potential to mold regional trade and investment patterns well into the future and to influence the direction of global economic cooperation at a challenging time. This paper evaluates the RCEP and estimates its potential...

In this paper, we examine possible medium-term changes in EU trade policy, including the negotiation and implementation of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with regional entities like ASEAN and the NAFTA countries. We also examine the possible conclusion of the Doha Round of multilateral trade...

The future creation of a region-wide economic agreement in Asia has become the hot issue among trade policymakers in the region. The APEC 2010 Summit Statement clearly states that the members should pursue a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), building on various ongoing regional...

The Trans Pacific Partnership was set to be the world's largest and most comprehensive FTA linking 12 countries on both sides of the Pacific. In a major turnaround, late January 2017, USA-one of the major trading partners to the region announced its decision to withdraw from it. Four of the...

Regional economic integration is back in vogue following the "stumble" in the Doha Round in July 2008. Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are driving this trend in Asia and the Pacific as well as in Central and South America, and the sheer volume of PTAs is striking. In the 1990s there were...

Bilateral and regional cooperation initiatives in Asia have been growing in importance over the last five years.These accords span the real and financial sectors; rather than following the more typical pattern of "trade first,money later", recent policy initiatives involve the simultaneous...

I develop an index for economic integration accounting for its gradual and bilateral nature: the Gradual And Bilateral Integration (GABI) index. The graduality captures differences in the depth and path of five stages in economic integration and is an improvement over the use of binary dummy...

Sweden became a member of the European Union (EU) in 1995. Since then, she has been integrated into the EU's internal market under the Single Market Programme (SMP). Before Sweden's accession to the EU, she was a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) signed with the EU in 1972....

This paper reviews trends in East Asian regionalism in the areas of trade and investment, money and finance, and infrastructure. It presents various measures of trade and financial integration. An important finding of the paper is that increasing trade and financial integration in the region is...