In the fast globalizing world, the combined effect of small market size, weak institutions, low human development, worsening terms of trade, persistent conflict and poor investment climate, pan-African cooperation as enshrined in the African Economic Community and NEPAD has been designated by African governments as the best overall framework for accelerating African development in the 21 centur...

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 Asia set against a background of political tensions and rivalries in key relationships in the region. The pape...

Motivated by the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) in Asia over the last decade, this paper studies the challenges faced by the Asian “noodle bowl”—overlapping, multiple trade rules, regulations, and standards in Asia—in the process of regional and global trade integration. The paper first highlights the importance of trade and investment linkages among Asian economies that have for...

ITH the future of the Doha Round uncertain, there has been a sharp increase in the number of bilateral and regional trade agreements. This has revived long-running arguments in international economics between those promoting global trade agreements and those favoring regional approaches. But in many ways this has been the wrong debate, especially for the world’s smallest, poorest, and most geog...

Introduction Economic integration and cooperation in Asia has traditionally been more market-driven and institution-lite. The Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) in 1997/98 and the Great Recession in 2008 changed that. As the number of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in Asia increases, intraregional trade has intensified and it continues to grow. In the financial side, the cross-border holding of financial...

due to timely process of wto negotiations, unwillingness of advanced industrial countries to give concessions to developing economies regarding tariff and non-tariff barriers on agricultural commodity imports, the ongoing initiatives in northern hemisphere to establish new and wider free trading areas which will divert trade out of the market from asian countries, and ineffectiveness of deepeni...

I. Introduction Trade integration in Africa is often viewed in light of the European Union and other regional integration arrangements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). From this perspective, integration is regarded as necessarily destined to proceed on a linear path where tariffs and non-tariff barriers are progressively eliminated, the trade regimes of member countries are...

Over the past decade the economies of East Asia and APEC more generally have been increasinglyopening up their markets, and in the process have achieved significant gains in exports and economicgrowth. In conjunction with this increased economic integration, there has been increased recognitionby regional governments of the potential for a substantial increase in the participation by smallbusin...