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The economic success of East Asia was due to an export-led growth strategy, which was heavily dependent on the global trading system underpinned by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In recent years, however; East Asian countries have shifted their trade policy focus to regional agreements and made Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) among themselves arid with other regions. Government organization has been restructured to increase FTA activities. Generally, the current literature predicts that FTA activities of East Asia would help to increase the welfare of the region. In this paper; we offer a critical assessment of East Asia FTAs. We note that East Asia FTAs provide incomplete coverage of sectors and are likely to lead to an inefficient resource allocation. FTA movements are not matched with actual trade flows. The benefits of East Asia FTAs are fairly limited and potential benefits, if any, would not likely be materialized in the near future. Our overall assessment is that the recent policy shift in East Asian countries from multilateral trade orientation or unilateral action to regionalism or a parallel multilateral and regional trade approach will not produce much gain. The governments should increase their efforts at economic reform and reduce barriers to trade and investment, rather than to allocate more resource and manpower to FTA activities.

A somewhat underappreciated aspect of the burgeoning rush to regional trade agreements (RTAs) is a discrepancy between the dispute settlement procedure (DSP) embodied in the original World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) and that found in the language of many RTAs. This chapter explores the issue in the context of a dynamic repeated game of trade agreements. As is well known, the institutional alternatives available in negotiating multilateral freer trade agreements – regional agreements, side agreements, trade dispute settlement punishments, and so on – can proscribe the limits and shape the nature of self-enforcing trade agreements. Here, we suggest the extent to which deviations from the WTO DSP embodied in RTAs – for example, “private interest access,” “third party procedures,” and “choice of forum” – can not only work against the interests of “weaker parties” but furthermore undermine multilateral agreements closer to free trade.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This study investigates the impact of trade integration on payment choice in international transactions using data from Turkey, an emerging economy that signed many trade agreements in the last two decades.

The authors use industry-level trade finance data from Turkey, which reports payment methods in exports at two-digit ISIC level for 180 export destinations. The authors performed linear as well as maximum likelihood techniques to test our hypothesis.

The authors show that the removal of trade barriers by bilateral free trade agreements leads to more exporter-financed transactions. This implies that lowering trade barriers contributes to reducing risk, which leads to more trade finance by exporters.

Trade finance is the lifeblood of global trade. Although the previous literature have analyzed the institutional and financial factors affecting exporters' decision to extend trade credit, the effect of economic integration has been overlooked. In this regard, this study represents the first attempt to analyze the impact of trade integration on trade finance.

The government of Korea considers the promotion of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) as necessary to develop its economy into an open trading nation. As for the countries with which the Korean government is actively investigating possible FTAs, there are Japan, Singapore, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN,) and Mexico. For the time-being, the FTA with Japan seems to be a critical one in practicing Korea s FTA policy. Recently, Korean industries show negative positions against a Korea-Japan FTA, with strong opposition from the labor union insisting that it is evident that Korea will sustain damages in the short-run and the dynamic (long-term) benefits are still ambiguous and uncertain. Regardless of whether their argument is correct or not, it will be difficult for Korea to conclude the FTA with Japan unless there is concrete confidence of balanced economic gains through the FTA between the two countries.

The main purpose of this chapter is to explore the role BRICS countries have played in the formation of regional (free) trade agreements. The present chapter tries to understand and document recent developments and directions taken by the BRICS countries either individually or in aligning with each other at the regional and mega-regional levels.

The chapter is largely empirical and descriptive to analyse the recent RTAs policies of the BRICS countries.

This chapter provides in particular as assessment of the impact on BRICS countries of the three recent Mega-RTAs; that is TPP, TPIP and RCEP. For this purpose, an attempt had been made to find out the commonalties and divergences in the RTAs policies of the BRICS countries.

The chapter is divided into six sections. After a brief introduction, the second section deals with the reasons for countries entering into RTAs. The third section documents the directions of the current negotiations on Mega-RTAs and its (potential) geographical implications for the BRICS countries. The fourth and the fifth sections deal with the current status of these RTAs and their noticeable impact on the response of the BRICS countries. The final section concludes the research with suggestions and recommendations.

RTAs and Mega-RTAs frameworks have been useful for BRICS countries. This recent development in trade negotiations can be regarded as promising for them.

The subject‐matter of this article is the recently altered trade policy and practice of Australia and their consistency with the WTO multilateral trading policies and principles. Following its unhappy experience with the power and politics driven trading under GATT, Australia unequivocally supported the legalistic approach of the WTO trading system during the Uruguay Round. Its active participation in the WTO has given it a fair share of global free trade. The rule‐based trading framework of the WTO protects, more often than not, Australia from powerful trading states and blocs using their economic clout to gain unfair terms of trade. Australia has recently opted to pursue its multi‐track trading together with its commitments to WTO multilaterial trade liberalization. Since 2002, it has been negotiating a preferential bilateral free trade agreement with its preferred trading partners. The flurry of such negotiations has resulted in the conclusion of a preferential bilateral free trade agreement with Singapore in 2003. Negotiation towards a similar agreement with the U.S. is ongoing. A preferential trade agreement (PTA) is by nature discriminatory and as such inconsistent with the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) rule under GATT Article I. Despite this apparent contradiction, GATT Article XXIV permits bilateral PTAs as an exception to the MFN rule under certain explicit conditions, which militate against discriminatory, differential and unequal trading deals among WTO members. This article examines the extent to which the existing and potential PTAs of Australia comply with the conditions of GATT Article XXIV. It concludes that these PTAs are not complementary, if not obstructive alternatives, to the WTO multilateral free trading system. They are not in the best long‐term trading interest of Australia either.

The purpose of this study is to empirically analyze the impact of logistics efficiency on trade volume growth, and to examine the effects of lower tariffs resulting from free trade agreements. In order to measure the impact of logistics efficiency on trade volume growth, the export and import trade volume among 53 countries was introduced as the dependent variable. Macroeconomic indicators including annual average tariff rate, logistics efficiency indicators for port, air, railroad, road and container vessel connectivity, as well as dummy variables such as whether a free trade agreement was signed, were introduced as the explanatory variables. Bilateral panel data between trading nations was used to estimate the gravity panel model, and analysis followed the categorization: 1) separate inputs of the five logistics efficiency variables and 2) one aggregated input of the five variables as a single indicator. The analysis found that logistics efficiency had a statistically significant impact on bilateral trade volume growth, while the impact of lowering tariff rates on increasing trade was insignificant. In addition, logistics efficiency was found to have a greater impact on increasing trade volume than free trade agreements. These results imply that trade can be promoted more effectively by establishing and efficiently operating logistics-related infrastructure rather than traditional methods of reducing trade barriers such as lowering tariffs and signing free trade agreements.

Civil society, as represented by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is exerting increasing pressure on national governments, multinational corporations, and international institutions. In this chapter we document the evolution of participation by civil society and NGOs in Western Hemisphere economic integration, focusing particularly on the NGO role in three important trade and investment agreements: the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas process. We find that NGOs are having increasing influence on the trade and investment agreements in the Hemisphere, and are poised to take on a major role in multilateral negotiations and agreements.