Asia Regional Integration Center
Tracking Asian Integration
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New blog posts
- 17Oct2019
More than just money: Digital technologies can help narrow the trade finance gap
Asia's financial linkages with the rest of the world remain strong. Domestic policies outside Asia are tied to Asia's financial markets.
25Mar2019How Technology Can Turn Asia’s Aging Workforce into an Advantage
Asia can gain from the longevity dividend by tapping emerging technologies to promote an age-friendly workplace.
13Feb2019Assessing the Impact of Regional Integration on Inclusive Growth
Analysis using a multidimensional index suggests that regional integration boosts growth and reduces poverty, beyond the usual effect of trade openness.
6Feb2019Migration in Asia: Where is everybody going?
Bart Edes, ADB’s Representative of the North American Office, features recent developments to promote greater intraregional migration in Asia to address labor shortages and enhance regional cooperation.
20Dec2018Will trade tensions dim Christmas lights?
This holiday season Christmas tree lights will continue to flicker despite the US-PRC trade tensions. But if the conflict rages, they may be dimmer a year from now.
8Oct2018US bond yield curve: Should we worry if it inverts?
The US keeps posting robust expansion, with a whopping 4.2% of annualized quarter-on-quarter growth in Q2 2018, the fastest since Q3 2014, keeping policy makers and academics carefully watching how long the growth momentum will persist.
25Jul2018Asia’s FTAs as living agreements: Creating new opportunities amid global trade uncertainties
Trade tensions among the world’s major economies have dominated news headlines recently, casting a shadow of uncertainty on international trade and endangering the prospect of sustained global economic growth.
31May2018Should emerging markets worry about higher interest rates and a strong dollar?
Jong Woo Kang, ARIC's Project Leader and ADB's Principal Economist, discusses how the rising interest rate and stronger dollar herald tighter credit markets and the possibility of flow reversals.
23Mar2018How can the changing trade landscape reshape global imbalances?
In the future, many Asian economies may not accumulate huge trade surpluses or foreign financial assets as quickly as now.
20Feb2018How do deepening global, regional value chains affect national export performance?
On his latest ADB Blog, Jong Woo Kang, ARIC's Project Leader and Principal Economist, talks about the evolving relationship between export performance and production network or value chains.
12Dec2017How can the TPP without the US still make sense?
Jong Woo Kang, ARIC's Project Leader and ADB's Principal Economist, explains why the remaining 11 countries still have good reason to maintain the #TPP momentum.
23Nov20173 ways Asian economies can prepare for a financial market downturn
On the one hand, the global economy is enjoying a robust and synchronized recovery. On the other hand, however, central banks are maintaining an extremely cautious stance on acting on this and switching gears back to the normal policy level.
13Nov2017Seizing the opportunity to prolong Asia’s trade growth momentum
The global trade slowdown of 2015-2016 had several causes. The first and main one is the weak global economic recovery. Yes, the global economy has been in an expansion phase. And yes, we are seeing sustained and synchronized global economic growth both in rich and emerging economies.
25Jul2017Regional Public Goods: A breath of fresh air
Hold your breath for the bad news: air pollution imperils Asia and the Pacific. Rapid carbon-intensive growth puts the region in a precarious position, where 4 of the 10 biggest polluters and 5 of the 10 most vulnerable countries to climate change reside together. The biggest polluters also happen to be the most productive in the region.
15May2017What we learned about foreign direct investment in Asia (Part I)
The policy regime as reflected by the business environment appears to help attract FDI, particularly greenfield investments, especially for economies with low scores for governance. This does not mean, however, that improving the business environment can substitute for governance reforms.
26Apr2017Benefits of good governance outweigh the costs
Good governance is too broad a concept to be covered under a single political system in any country. But the crucial factor underpinning effective governance is where the decision-making authority lies, and how it is exercised. Authority should be accompanied by accountability and responsibility, without which good governance cannot be enshrined into any system.
12Apr2017Revisiting FDI and the international trade nexus
Recent improvement in global economic outlook, largely due to better growth prospects in major economies and increase in trade flows, can be a boon for FDI. But as some countries pursue more inward looking economic policies, how would this bear on the link between international trade and investment?
15Feb2017The resurgence of bilateralism and Asia’s evolving FTA landscape
Against the backdrop of rising bilateralism in the West, where does Asia stand? Is the region moving towards the same direction or is it charting its own unique course? Understanding the evolution of Asia’s FTA landscape holds the key to these questions.
30Jan2017What type of protectionism should we fear?
US President Donald Trump recently signed executive orders to withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Both moves suggest his pre-election rhetoric of criticizing the current international trade regime is being translated into concrete action.
14Nov2016What did we learn from the US election on globalization, trade?
The outcome of the US presidential election on 9 November was historic in that it provides a yardstick against which to assess where popular sentiment is heading on important issues such as globalization, inequality, and international trade.
25May2016Rising tides of protectionism will cause more harm than good
It has yet to be probed whether the global economic slowdown has led to the rise of protectionist trade policies, or it’s the other way around. Either way, the fact that protectionism is growing around the world should concern economists and practitioners alike.
2May2016Structural reforms to sustain Asia’s growth
The key to boosting the region’s potential growth is to continue structural reforms. These are policy actions that eliminate impediments to efficient resource allocation, reduce technical and managerial inefficiency, enhance an economy’s ability to respond to shocks, and lay the foundations for greater private investment and innovation.
28Mar2016Developing countries should not worry yet about Wall Street bashing
Wall Street bashing is always in vogue during election time, as we are observing in the run-up to the US presidential election. Is this because financiers and bankers deserve punishment for their greedy and reckless behavior that adds no value to the economy? Or are they simply political footballs?
2Mar2016Time to go back to the basics to benefit more from trade
So what drives this new trend? ADB’s recent Asian Economic Integration Report 2015 highlights cyclical factors such as weak global demand, as well as potential structural factors like slower expansion of global value chains, and growth moderation and structural transformation in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
23Feb2016Will Kaesong shutdown mark the end of a unique SEZ experiment?
The decision of the Republic of Korea to shut down the Kaesong Industrial Complex on 10 February in the wake of North Korea’s nuclear test and subsequent long-range missile test rattled the Republic of Korea’s stock market.
9Sep2015Asia’s Free Trade Agreements continue to make progress
FTAs appear to be the shape of things to come for Asia given the slow progress of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round in delivering a global trade deal.
23Jul2015Declining growth of output per worker in Asia: so what and what now?
Since the early 2000s, labor productivity growth, or the growth of output per worker (measured by GDP divided by employment), has been declining in most economies in Asia. This means that economic growth in these economies may also fall, along with the growth of workers’ incomes and standards of living.
Archives
- 1Apr2013
Can trade create activism among Asian economies with challenging characteristics?
The fortunes of Asia's developing countries can swing wildly. Frontier economies like Myanmar and Mongolia were deserted by investors just a decade ago.
- 18Mar2013
Global supply chains, development and international trade
In a new paper written for the September 2011 NBER-Bank of England conference “Globalization in an Age of Crisis: Multilateral Economic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century"...
- 4Mar2013
Is protectionism a viable policy option for the G20?
Protectionism seems to be back in favour for many policymakers in the G20. Since the start of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in September 2008, protectionist measures are reported to have outnumbered liberalizing measures by five to one worldwide.
- 19Feb2013
Global antidumping and the People’s Republic of China
Anti-dumping (AD) investigations are widespread. According to a WTO Report, from 1995 to 2008, there were 43 countries that launched a total of 3427 investigations against 100 countries.
- 4Feb2013
Does exporting raise firm innovation?
Evidence supporting exporters as more productive than non-exporters is well documented, but evidence on why or how they become more productive is less conclusive.
- 21Jan2013
Logistics development in Asia with the USA and Europe
In terms of container export flows, the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC) has been outpacing both manufacturing exporters, the USA and Europe for years.
- 7Jan2013
Services trade in Asia: opportunities and challenges
In 2008, RuralShores, India's leading rural business process outsourcing (BPO) company, established its first BPO center at Bagepalli--a drought-prone town outside Bangalore.
- 17Dec2012
Myanmar’s trade and its potential
A recent paper (Ferrarini, B. 2012, Myanmar’s Trade and its Potential, to be published soon) assesses Myanmar’s merchandise trade against potential by fitting an augmented gravity model to a panel data set of...
- 7Dec2012
US Dollar: The slipping anchor
The world dollar standard is an accident of history that greatly facilitates international trade and exchange.
- 3Dec2012
A new FTA in a congested trade landscape: Can RCEP unravel the noodle bowl?
Just this past November 20th, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced their intent to negotiate a comprehensive Asia-wide trade agreement.