Economic Regionalisation and Intra-Industry Trade : Pacific-Asian Perspectives

The present paper examines the trade development of Pacific-Asian economies during the past decade from the perspective of regional integration. Its main focus is on the development of intra-regional and intra-industry trade. It provides some statistical evidence for the often-heard argument that the remarkable development of Pacific-Asian trade in the 1980s should be seen as a case for the "flying-geese" pattern of trade development, which is basically of inter-industry type. It argues, however, that developments since the mid-1980s have provided a new dimension to the regional division of labour — increasing the opportunities for intra-industry trade (IIT) among the Pacific-Asian economies. The empirical analysis based on the Grubel-Lloyd index of IIT in manufactures suggests that large increases in the level of IIT in the developing economies of the region is a consequence of "globalisation" of corporate activities in the United States and, more recently, in Japan and the ...