Several initiatives have emerged for regional economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region. The United States has led the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, and ASEAN countries have recently started to promote the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. This paper...

This paper gives an overview of the progress of regionalism in East Asia and examines the background of the recent embrace of trade agreements by China, Japan, and South Korea. It discusses the progress toward free trade agreements (FTAs) within East Asia and offers reasons for their slow...

The Korean government introduced the trade adjustment assistance (TAA) program to facilitate structural adjustment under the implementation of its free trade agreements (FTAs). One big problem with the TAA program is that its criterion for eligibility for TAA support requires a 25 percent...

This paper estimates the degree of risk sharing for each of 10 East Asian countries with countries in the region and with OECD countries by using cross-country consumption correlations and formal regression analysis. Risk sharing is found to be far from complete and quite low for most of the...

As trade integration deepens in East Asia, closer links among the business cycles of East Asian countries can be expected. Theoretically, however, increased trade could lead to either closer or looser business cycles across trading partners. This paper seeks to understand how the business cycles...

As was the case in the Mexican crisis of 1994-95, the G-7 and international financial institutions appear to have lost their zeal to garner the support they need for reform. The ongoing debate on the future direction of international financial reform suggests that most of the problems are likely...