BACKGROUND In the regional movement toward ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), medical professions including physicians can be qualified to practice medicine in another country. Ensuring comparable, excellent medical qualification systems is crucial but the availability and analysis of relevant information has been lacking. OBJECTIVE This study had the following aims: 1) to comparatively analyze ...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) involves twelve Pacific Rim economies of varying sizes and structures. Although often portrayed as a free trade agreement, the TPPA can, at best, be expected to deliver paltry overall growth gains from trade liberalization. The much higher figures touted by TPPA advocates are largely due to dubious ‘non-trade measures’, most of which have been reje...

The target for member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to implement the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 has raised concerns on how the free movements of health professionals would come into practice. After the Declaration on the AEC Blueprint was signed by heads of the member states in 2008, the ministries of commerce met in Cha-am, Petchaburi, Thailand, in 2009, to proc...

Since the late nineties, both theoretical and empirical analysis devoted to the real exchange rate suggest that their dynamics might be well approximated by nonlinear models. This paper examines this possibility for post-1970 monthly ASEAN-5 data, extending the existing research in two directions. First, we use recently developed unit root tests which allow for more flexible nonlinear stationar...

APEC Study Centre, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand     Abstract:   One of the key sets of questions underlying Asia Pacific economic cooperation over the last decade has been over the nature and form of the regional trade architecture that would gradually emerge from the turmoil of the Asia-Pacific “noodle bowl” of bilateral and plurilateral FTAs, and how that architecture...

Abstract This chapter examines the institutional strategy of each ASEAN and ASEAN-led institution in four phases, 1990–2002, 2003–2012, 2013–2016, 2017–2020: (1) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM), (2) Summit, (3) ASEAN–China dialogues, (4) Regional Forum (ARF), (5) East Asia Summit (EAS), (6) Defense Ministers (ADMM) ADMM-Plus. All these frameworks are important because they, either formally or ...

Abstract The theoretical and applied issues of the relationship between institutions and economic growth have thoroughly been examined in ASEAN countries. This study revisits the issue and tests the role of institutions in the economic growth using the World Governance Indicators (WGI) and uses a new method to examine the impact of the various institutions on the economic growth. We used dynam...

The political and military atmosphere has heated in the South China Sea over the past few years, both bilaterally and multilaterally. However, not every country in the South China Sea has aligned interests. While the Mischief Reef incident of 1994-1995 saw ASEAN united against Chinese assertiveness, each country has grown more focused on isolated issues less relevant to the nations as a group.