Asia Regional Integration Center

The Asia Regional Integration Center launches the Economic Calendar, a new feature which tracks upcoming and current official releases of key macroeconomic and financial data, and policy announcements. The Economic Calendar is updated daily to provide the latest information on economic developments in Asia, the US, and the eurozone. View the calendar.

The spread of Asia’s free trade agreements (FTAs) has sparked an important debate on the impact of such agreements on business activity. This pioneering study, edited by Masahiro Kawai and Ganeshan Wignaraja, uses new evidence from surveys of East Asian exporters – including Japan, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea and three ASEAN economies of the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – to shed light on the FTA debate. Read the press release and publication details.

The Asia Regional Integration Center, dedicated to regional surveillance and maintaining economic and financial databases within the Office of Regional Economic Integration, announces the launch of its Twitter page. This features links to latest global financial market summaries and regional economic research. Follow ARIC on http://twitter.com/ARIC_ADB.

The joint ADB-ADBI flagship study "Institutions for Regional Integration: Toward an Asian Economic Community" is now available in electronic format. This study looks at the institutional framework for regional cooperation and integration and analyzes why, despite the dense network of arrangements and institutions, Asia remains "institution light". It recommends some principles and options to strengthen Asia's institutional architecture to achieve an Asian economic community. Click here to access the e-book.  

Stephan Haggard surveys regional economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific in light of the new literature on international institutions. The paper outlines the political sources of well-known features of regional institutions and considers several proposals for deepening cooperation. Read more.

Hsiao Chink Tang, Philip Liu, and Eddie Cheung investigate the effectiveness of countercyclical fiscal policy in five ASEAN countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Through a structural vector autoregression (VAR) model, government spending is found to have weak and largely insignificant impact on output, while taxes are found to have outcomes contrary to conventional theory.  Read more.

The paper aims to examine economic interdependence and balancing power politics, and their mixed implications for regional institution building in East Asia based on the concept of common security. By pointing out the gap between the violent conflict prediction and the stability and prosperity reality following the end of the Cold War, the paper gives analysis to the factors affecting the security relations in the region, including (i) the role of the US, (ii) the rise of the PRC, (iii) ASEAN‘s efforts at regional cooperation, the (iv) the PRC–Japan rivalry.  The author concludes that economic interdependence and regional cooperation in Asia have constrained a power struggle from spiraling out of control, while open regionalism has become a reasonable approach to regional institution building. Finally, the paper makes policy recommendations with respect to principles and steps in moving to a new regional security order.

Governments and monetary authorities in emerging East Asia need to cooperate more on exchange rates and other policies to turn the swift post-crisis recovery into more balanced, long- term growth. The report notes that the weaker outlook for the global economy coupled with the phasing out of fiscal and monetary stimulus within the region means economic growth should moderate next year following emerging Asia's robust recovery in 2010.  Read the news release and highlights. Download the report.