Regionalism In East Asia: Why Has It Flourished Since 2000 And How Far Will It Go?

by Richard Pomfret

Overview

This book examines an important economic development in East Asia during the first decade of the 21st century. Whereas regional arrangements were, with the sole significant exception of ASEAN, conspicuously absent before 2000, they have proliferated since 2000 in both the monetary and trade areas. The book places this political development in the changing nature of the national economies, especially their increasing integration into regional and global value chains with the fragmentation of production processes.This is a freshly written, coherent analysis of the topic, drawing upon (updated) material from a series of articles that the author has published on the subject over the years. Although the book is based on theoretical and, especially, empirical analysis of regionalism, it is written in a non-technical style accessible to a wide range of readers. The book is likely to be adopted as supplementary reading for university courses on Asian economies, whether be it in area studies or economics/political economy disciplines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789814304320
Publisher:	World Scientific Publishing Company, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/09/2010
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix

List of Tables xi

Abbreviations and Acronyms xiii

Preface xvii

1 Introduction 1

2 Before 2000: The Case of the Missing Regionalism 8

From 1945 to 1967 10

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 14

Regional Trading Arrangements outside Southeast Asia 21

Conclusions 25

3 The Rise and Decline of Open Regionalism 27

Origins of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation 28

The Bogor Declaration and APEC's Heyday, 1994-1997 32

The Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalisation Initiative, the Asian Crisis and APEC 34

Conclusions 36

4 Market-driven Regionalization: The Emergence of Subregional Zones 39

Sub-Regional Economic Zones (SRZs) 41

Regional Value Chains 48

Trade Facilitation 54

Conclusions 56

5 The Asian Crisis, Monetary Integration, and ASEAN+3 58

Monetary and Financial Integration before 1997 60

From AMF to CMI 62

After the Chiang Mai Initiative 69

Conclusions 72

6 Asian Regionalism Resurgent: FTAs after 2000 74

ASEAN: From Free Trade Area to Economic Community 76

The ASEAN-China FTA and the Weakening of ASEAN+3 80

Bilateral Trade Agreements 83

Conclusions 87

7 How Wide is the Region? 93

The East Asia Summit (ASEAN+6), Variable Geometry, and the G20 94

Australia and New Zealand 100

India 103

Central Asia 105

Conclusions 108

8 How Deep is Asian Regionalism? 111

Variations in Trade Costs 114

Trade Facilitation Requires Deeper Integration 122

Migration 126

Conclusions 128

9 Conclusions 131

Appendix: Measuring Trade Costs and Trade Facilitation 139

Defining Trade Costs: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives 140

Partial and Indirect Measures of Trade Costs 144

Gravity Studies 146

An Aggregate Measure of Trade Costs: The cif-fob Gap 151

Choice of Mode, Time and Competition 155

Estimates of the cif-fob Gap 157

Conclusions 167

References 168

Index 181