Up to this point, Taiwan has had discriminatory trade and investment policies towards China, severely limiting economic engagement across the Straits. Not having free and open trade with China, one of the largest and most important parts of the East Asian economy, has resulted in Taiwan...

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...

Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) into China is analysed using an FDI model that accounts for different modes of FDI as well as third country effects and adds to existing literature by incorporating a new measurement of political distance. Political closeness between countries is shown to...

The complex interaction between trade and politics is analysed for the Japan-China relationship using Granger causality tests. The purpose is to determine the presence and direction of causation between trade and political events, both positive and negative, and to gauge an idea of the lag...

This paper provides a survey and a brief critical review of the literature on the widely used gravity models of trade, as a prelude to the justification of its use with the stochastic frontier methodology. The important papers on the theoretical foundations of the gravity model are reviewed and...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement aims to be a high quality, 21st Century economic agreement that furthers economic integration in the Asia Pacific. In late 2011 it remains unclear whether the TPP will turn out to be a stepping stone or stumbling block towards regional or global...

This paper outlines our collaborative research project for 2014-16, aimed at evaluating the economic and legal risks and benefits associated with the Australian Government's recent approach to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), and broader implications for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)...

The Japanese higher education sector has seen increases in tuition with stagnant household incomes in a society where family support for university students has been the norm. Student loans from the government have grown rapidly to sustain the gradual increase in university enrollments. These...