The authors examine the economic case for the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) Agreement signed on January 6, 2004 by India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. They start with a detailed analysis of the preferential trading arrangements in South Asia to look at...

This paper provides an analytic discussion of China's complex foreign trade regime and suggests policy reforms. The paper pays special attention to the implementation of national trade policies at provincial and city levels. This is important for understanding developments in China's external...

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of raising tariffs on inputs, complemented by duty drawbacks on exports, in a small open economy. The main findings of the paper are as follows. First, a tariff on the input unaccompanied by duty drawbacks on exports works like a production tax at...

After lying dormant for two decades, regional integration is on the rise. Recent initiatives suggest that the world trading system may be moving toward three trading blocs clustered around Japan, the European Community, and the United States. Some view this development as a move toward a less...

The authors analyze the welfare effects of regional integration in a model of endogenous protection. They show that introducing preferential trading leads to an increase in protection against countries outside the preferential trading area. Moreover, the important Meade result of preferential...

The author studies the case for three different approaches to regionalism in East Asia. First, he examines closely the only serious attempt at preferential trading in the region - the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has recently announced plans to form the ASEAN Free Trade...

To shed light on regional integration schemes in North America and Europe (and on the alleged trading bloc in East Asia), the authors explore the nature of bilateral trade relationships. Using the gravity model, they conduct an econometric analysis of trade flows between major trading countries....

Regional integration is on the rise again, despite its apparent failure among developing countries in the past. The authors survey the ambiguous economies of customs unions, emphasizing that the traditional dichotomy between"trade creation"and"trade diversion"is not particularly helpful for...

This paper uses a global computable general-equilibrium framework with new detail on six Levant countries -- the Arab Republic of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, and Turkey -- to quantify the direct and indirect economic effects of the Syrian war and the advance of the...

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