Towards Optimal Provision of Regional Public Goods in Asia and the Pacific

With rapid technological advances, deepening regional integration requires Asia’s policymakers to consider and develop new ways of regional policy cooperation to deal with the region’s common challenges such as cross-border trade and investment, vulnerabilities to volatile capital flows and financial shocks, regional infrastructure gaps, technological adaptations, environmental challenges, natural disaster responses, and communicable diseases.

The region has benefitted from deepening regional cooperation and integration to tackle the region’s common challenges, but more is needed. The concept of regional public goods (RPGs) draws on the need for regional economies’ collective efforts to address common challenges for development, where independent actions of individual nation states may not lead to adequate provision of RPGs given the uncertainty of their impacts and/or the concerns over free riding problems.

This conference will gather leading academics, policymakers, and international organizations to discuss the theory, practice, and policy considerations of RPGs.