Is the recent proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) in Asia a healthy development, or runs the risk of turning into an unmanageable ""noodle bowl"" in the future? The goal of this paper is to shed some light on this question. The results show that membership in the Asian RTAs...

Deeper economic integration within the Caribbean has been a regional policy priority since the establishment of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the decision to create the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). Implementation of integration initiatives has, however, been slow, despite...

This paper documents the steady increase in intraregional trade in sub-Saharan Africa since 1980, links this rise to important growth spillovers in the region, and identifies the main source countries and those most vulnerable to the economic conditions of others. Estimates show that in the...

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the Asia-Pacific region have proliferated rapidly over the past five years and are creating a complex web of intersecting bilateral and regional trade agreements. This paper describes the proliferation of these PTAs, discusses their characteristics and...

This paper provides a political economy analysis of the incentives underpinning a country''s decision to enter a regional trade agreement when a multilateral free trade agreement is available, and of how entering a regional trade agreement affects the incentives to pursue multilateral trade...

The paper evaluates the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) within the global structure of overlapping regional trade agreements (RTAs) using a modified gravity equation. First, it examines the effects of the Trade Liberalization Program which started in 2006. SAFTA would have a minor effect...

The paper employs synthetic control method (SCM) to determine the impact of trade agreements for 64 Latin American country pairs in the period 1989-1996. The results suggest that trade agreements have markedly boosted exports in Latin America, on an average by 76.4 percentage points over ten...

Understanding how markets are connected and shocks are transmitted is an important issue for policymakers and market participants. In this paper, we examine the connectedness of Asian equity markets within the region and vis-a-vis other major global markets. Using time-varying connectedness...

This Working Paper brings together three papers prepared as background for discussions at the Second High-Level Conference on Asian Integration cohosted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the IMF on May 25, 2006. The first documents recent trends in the intraregional flow of goods and...

This paper focusses on income inequality in Asia, its drivers and policies to combat it. It finds that income inequality has risen in most of Asia, in contrast to many regions. While in the past, rapid growth in Asia has come with equitable distribution of the gains, more recently fast-growing...