We study trade integration among 15 selected Asian and Oceanic economies using factor models. The principal component approach is employed to extract the common factor that drives trade integration from bilateral trade integration series. It is found that the estimated common trade integration...

Low positive GDP growth has been interpreted as evidence that the economy may be "stalling", implying that low growth is a strong predictor of future recessions. We examine the empirical evidence for stalling based on kernel density estimates, probit estimates and Markov switching models....