IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/983.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

European and American Regionalism: Effects on and Options for Asia

Author

Listed:
  • Anderson, Kym
  • Snape, Richard H

Abstract

This paper addresses several questions of concern to economies excluded from the world's two major trading blocs the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA). First, is there evidence from the past that suggests the direct and indirect effects of regional integration agreements (RIAs) on trade and investment have been income-reducing for economies not included? Many would answer `yes', and some cite the increasing regionalization of world trade to support that view. We suggest that this conclusion is probably unwarranted. It is true that the share of world trade that is intra-regional has been increasing, but the proportion of GDP traded has also increased sufficiently rapidly for there also to be growth in trade with other regions, and in the share of GDP traded extra-regionally. Would enlargement of NAFTA and EU membership contribute to, or slow this past trend for increasing economic integration across regions as well as within regions. Not all the signs are positive and the net effect may indeed be negative, but the paper argues that on balance the concerns of excluded economies relating to trade and investment diversion are probably exaggerated. A broader systemic question that is more worrying for non-included small open economies is whether or not the proliferation of RIAs will erode the GATT rules-based multilateral trading system. We conclude that there is indeed cause for this systemic concern. The paper also considers how Asian and other non-included economies might respond to the economic integration initiatives in North America, Europe and elsewhere.

Suggested Citation

  • Anderson, Kym & Snape, Richard H, 1994. "European and American Regionalism: Effects on and Options for Asia," CEPR Discussion Papers 983, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:983
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=983
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Howard J. Wall, 2002. "Has Japan been left out in the cold by regional integration?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 84(Sep), pages 25-36.
    2. Anderson, Kym, 1995. "Agricultural Competitiveness After the Uruguay Round," Review of Marketing and Agricultural Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 63(03), pages 1-12, December.
    3. Richard H. Snape, 1996. "NAFTA, The Americas, AFTA and CER: Reinforcement or competition for APEC?," Asia Pacific Economic Papers 254, Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    4. Gary Banks & Ken Clements & Peter Kenyon, 2003. "Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia, 2002: Richard Hal Snape (1936–2002)," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 79(245), pages 159-164, June.
    5. Richard H. Snape, 1996. "Trade Discrimination–Yesterday's Problem?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 72(219), pages 381-396, December.
    6. Rajapatirana, Sarath, 1994. "The evolution of trade treaties and trade creation : lessons for Latin America," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1371, The World Bank.
    7. Christopher Findlay, 2001. "Old Issues in New Regionalism," Asia Pacific Economic Papers 311, Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    8. Anne O. Krueger, 1997. "Problems with Overlapping Free Wade Areas," NBER Chapters, in: Regionalism versus Multilateral Trade Arrangements, pages 9-24, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Jenny Corbett & David Vines, 1998. "The Asian Crisis: Competing Explanations," SCEPA working paper series. 1998-12, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic Integration; EU; NAFTA; Protectionism; Trading Blocs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F43 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Economic Growth of Open Economies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:983. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.