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...

Pacific economies are confronted with several structural constraints that limit their economic growth, most importantly their small size and remoteness from major world markets. In this paper we study the importance of transport connectivity for Pacific economies when participating in the world...

The high hopes that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would open up trade across the Pacific were dashed by the decision of the new US Government under President Trump to withdraw from the agreement in January 2017. Despite being controversial, the TPP had been recognized as an agreement that...

Fuel subsidies are widespread and debated extensively. The issues with these subsidies are fully acknowledged by many energy economists; however, the total subsidy level remains high. This is because energy subsidies are often closely related to the political economy viewpoint. Moreover, the...

In the last decade, East Asia has engaged in constructing numerous mechanisms to enhance regional cooperation in the areas of trade and finance. However, the region's economic architecture exhibits certain idiosyncrasies such as an eclectic institutional structure and a limited level of...

Following the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, financial authorities in ASEAN+3 embarked on several new initiatives for East Asia's financial cooperation, including: (i) regional economic surveillance led by the Economic Review and Policy Dialogue (ERPD); (ii) a regional liquidity support...

This paper aims to provide a non-technical explanation of the concept of trade in value added, with particular reference to East Asia. The trade in value added approach allows us to redefine the relationship between countries of origin and destination in international trade, and thereby...

The "decoupling" of East Asia from its economic interactions - both in trade and finance - with the rest of the world refers to the phenomenon of a weakening of the impact of demand and supply shocks emanating from the advanced countries on the region's economic performance since the early...

East Asia is a region of great global significance, currently accounting for around 30% of the global economy by most measures, e.g. production, trade, investment and finance. It has also become increasingly integrated in various ways. Integration at the micro-level has steadily progressed since...

This study is the first attempt to investigate the patterns of imports and exports between the Russian Federation and East Asian economies, namely, the People's Republic of China; Hong Kong, China; Macau, China; Japan; the Republic of Korea; and Mongolia. To this end, a panel-gravity trade model with...