Trade policy reforms which lead to changes in world prices of agricultural commodities or domestic policies aimed at affecting agricultural prices are often seen as causing a policy dilemma : a fall in agricultural prices benefits poor urban consumers but hurts poor rural producers, while a rise...

The global economic crisis has affected the East Asian economies via trade and investment. The export-led model which had been responsible for the East Asian Miracle now must redirect the basis of growth from exports sent to the US and Europe to regional and domestic demand. Regional trade...

This article identifies a number of examples of apparent lack of coherence in United States and European Union trade policies. They include the effect of preferential policies that lock in trade shares and inhibit growth promoting structural adjustment, biases in tariff structures, policies that...

While it is widely recognized that industrial development is imperative in developing countries to reduce poverty and to attain sustainable economic growth, there is no consensus on how to develop industries and where to start. Generally, the literature argues that developing countries should...

In May 2013 the ASEAN+6 countries began to negotiate the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The objective of this paper is to analyze the feasibility of constructing such a region-wide agreement and to examine ways to multilateralize it. The paper first reviews free trade...

Serious efforts at economic integration among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members started only in 1992. Initial obstacles included the widespread pursuit of import substitution policies of industrialization, the small extent of intra-ASEAN trade, and the wide differences...

This paper examines the gains for South Asian economies from integrating with East Asia and India’s role in this process. Evidence of increased pan-Asian integration exists but the process is uneven. Bilateral trade has grown. Bilateral foreign direct investment flows and free trade...

Transport cost, a significant determinant of competitiveness. Due lack of regional connectivity in South Asia and poor trade facilitation at border crossing, logistic costs are 13-14% of the value compared to 8% in USA. Transport connectivities between South Asian countries continue to remain...

Several recent empirical and theoretical studies have revived interest in the relationship between the level of the exchange rate and economic development. This paper develops a dynamic model based on the Ricardian framework with a continuum of goods to consider the issue from a somewhat...

This paper extends our previous paper (Aizenman, Chinn, and Ito 2008) and explores some of the unexplored questions. First, we examine the channels through which the trilemma policy configurations affect output volatility. Secondly, we investigate how trilemma policy configurations affect the...