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The Asian “Noodle Bowl”:Is It Serious for Business?

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Abstract

A lively debate is taking place over the impact of free trade agreements (FTAs) on East Asia's business between those who view the agreements as a harmful Asian "noodle bowl"—i.e., overlapping regional trade agreements—of trade deals and others who see net beneficial effects in terms of regional liberalization and a building block to multilateral liberalization. A lack of enterprise-level data has made it difficult to resolve the debate. Providing new evidence from surveys of 609 East Asian firms (in Japan, Singapore, Republic of Korea [hereafter Korea], Thailand, and Philippines), this paper seeks to address the critical question of whether the Asian noodle bowl of multiple overlapping FTAs is harmful to business activity, particularly for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).[ADBI WP NO 136]

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  • Masahiro Kawai, 2009. "The Asian “Noodle Bowl”:Is It Serious for Business?," Working Papers id:1936, eSocialSciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:1936
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    2. Xiaoping Chen & Yuchen Shao, 2017. "Trade policies for a small open economy: The case of Singapore," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(11), pages 2500-2511, November.
    3. Richard Baldwin & Theresa Carpenter, 2010. "A 3-Bloc Dance: East Asian Regionalism And The North Atlantic Trade Giants," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 55(01), pages 27-47.
    4. Fukunari Kimura, 2010. "Economic Integration in Extended East Asia: Toward a New Trade Regime," Chapters, in: Noel Gaston & Ahmed M. Khalid (ed.), Globalization and Economic Integration, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Kuwayama, Mikio & LaFleur, Marcelo & Durán Lima, José Elías, 2010. "Latin America and Asia Pacific trade and investment relations at a time of international financial crisis," Comercio Internacional 4329, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).

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