ASEAN RISING: ASEAN and AEC Beyond 2015 puts together ideas, thoughts and papers from more than 30 experts and specialists in the region on various areas relating to ASEAN and AEC beyond 2015. It discusses the challenges for ASEAN and AEC, how to face them and how ASEAN should move forward...

This study quantifies the impact of traditional and new age' provisions of preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) on merchandise trade and investment. It does so by estimating gravity models of bilateral trade and investment. It finds that recent and some past PTAs are not as benign as some...

The point of reference for this paper is the theoretical structure of disaggregated, general equilibrium models of the ORANI type, as outlined in Dixon et al. (1982) and Vincent (1981). This theoretical structure has been applied in a variety of contexts, with particular models differing widely,...

It is now generally recognized that special interest group influence on economic decision making is not in theory a phenomenon restricted to democratic capitalism. Governments which have attained power by non-democratic means must eventually seek legitimacy, either by populist appeals to the...

Traditionally, asset demands are derived as a solution to the individual's or household's problem of allocating wealth among various real and financial alternatives. The demand for each asset depends on the own real rate of return, but also on the real rates of return to alternative assets. The...

The first purpose of this paper is to demonstrate, as a theoretical.proposition, that elimination of controls on bank interest rates would not necessarily lead to a decline in output in those sectors which were previously able to obtain cheap bank credit, The efficiency gains obtained by...

This paper considers what special features of services need to be taken into account in modelling services trade, and summarises methods to quantify barriers to services trade. One feature of services trade policy is the formal recognition within the WTO of commercial presence as a method by...

The paper reviews the commitments achieved so far in selected sectors under the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS), and compares these commitments with actual regulatory practice. The aim is to identify whether significant services trade liberalization has been achieved in reality,...