India has been witnessing a sharp rise in merchandise trade and showing greater trade interdependence on a large variety of goods, particularly in intermediate and capital goods. However, higher transportation costs continue to impede Indias trade. Costlier transportation prohibits trade in...

Over the last two decades electricity sectors in both developed and developing countries have been subject to restructuring to introduce private capital and increase competition. This has been accompanied by the introduction of new regulatory regimes. Although the effects of such reforms in a...

Development of infrastructure is one of the key priorities of East Asia Summit (EAS) countries. By constructing an Infrastructure Index for 104 countries comprising all the EAS members, this paper examines the levels of infrastructure attainment of EAS countries in a comparative global...

The Asia and Pacific region and Latin American and Caribbean region are two regions divided not only by vast geographic distance, but also by disparities in economics, politics, culture, and history. Most recently, a number of forums explored the possibility of closing such gaps and linking the...

Within the context of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Scorecard mechanism developed by the ASEAN Secretariat to monitor the implementation of the AEC Blueprint, the study focuses on the current state, performance and impact of investment liberalization and facilitation, trade facilitation,...

Over the recent past, Geographical Indication (GI) has emerged as one of the most contentious categories of intellectual property (IP). Two among the three TRIPS issues presently under discussion at the WTO pertain to GIs, the third being the relationship between the TRIPS and the CBD....

This paper seeks to add to the current debate about financial development and growth in the emerging world by looking at how different financial systems evolve : how and why financial structures change during various stages of development, how best to measure them, and seeing what practical...

Rules of origin (ROO) have emerged as an area in which consensus is hard to achieve among negotiating countries within an RTA. Disagreements over rules of origin have often deferred the implementation of several trade agreements. One of the reasons for this is because ROO are viewed as those...

The last decade has witnessed significant influx of direct foreign investment in developing countries. The increased flow of foreign investment has contributed to the ability of developing countries to produce import competing manufactured goods by combining imported and domestically produced...