T he recent havoc caused by typhoon Haiyan in central Philippines provides an example of the grim reality of the impact of disasters in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. This is personal to me as many of my relatives and friends died and many more had their properties all washed away. You see, I was born in Tacloban and grew up in the city. It pained me to see my 87-ye...

a r t i c l e i n f o The ASEAN–China free trade agreement went into effect January 1, 2010 and became the world's third largest FTA by trade volume after the European Economic Area and the North American Free Trade Agreement. This paper focuses on highlighting the impacts of the reduction of barriers to trade on investment in a dynamic general computable equilibrium framework. We present and c...

The Asian financial crisis in 1997 brought to the attention of member countries of the Association of South East Asian Countries (ASEAN-5) (comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) the need for closer monetary co-operation. Central to the OCA literature is the nature and symmetry of underlying economic disturbances. If the economic disturbances are similar across...

Recently, a new resolve for both increased economic integration and monetary and exchange rate cooperation has started to emerge in ASEAN, especially since the 19971998 Asian financial crisis. According to the optimum currency area theory, the degree of trade integration is one most important criterion for joining a currency union. The large increase in intra-ASEAN trade in recent years natural...

The prevailing burden of the diabetes epidemic and its associated complications poses a substantial threat to socioeconomic development worldwide. This crisis is magnified in developing and recently-developed nations including countries in south-east Asia. Estimates from the International Diabetes Federation suggest an inverse relationship between the economic status of a country and the rise o...

This study examines the dynamic relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and total factor productivity having controlled for other channels of external openness: exports and imports in four ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. We employ the panel data analysis PDA (fixed effect and dynamic panel models) as well as the panel cointegration and Granger causali...

The ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) constitute an economic powerhouse, yet these countries also harbor a mostly hidden burden of poverty and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Almost 200 million people live in extreme poverty in ASEAN countries, mostly in the low or lower middle-income countries of Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Viet Nam, and Cambo...

The ACTION (Asean CosTs In ONcology) Study will be one of the largest observational studies of the burden of cancer ever conducted in Asia. The study will involve 10,000 newly diagnosed patients with cancer and will be carried out across eight low- and middle income countries within the ASEAN region (Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Viet Nam, Laos and the Philippines). Patients...

Asian economies and China as major economic actors in terms of both regional and global economy are in the process of economic stagnation for now. Therefore, it is expected a sharp decrease in energy demand –that has continued since 1990sof Asian economies which will be directly affected by export and investment flows. In this context, first of all, the literature on the relation between econom...

Needless to say, it is necessary to study the relative scales of the trade creation effect and the trade diversion effect to evaluate success of ASEAN trade integration and to determine whether or not the intra-bloc trade share is appropriate as an indicator of the progress of reducing intra-regional disparities in ASEAN. Therefore, this paper first uses descriptive statistics and some key indi...