• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.129-168
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• 2016

The Asia-Pacific region is not typically seen as one geographic or socio-economic space. Yet, 58 regional economies occupying the space of 28 million square kilometers from Turkey in the West, Russian Federation in the North, French Polynesia in the East and New Zealand in the South belong to the Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). This commission provides a forum for member states that "promotes regional cooperation and collective action, assisting countries in building and sustaining shared economic growth and social equity". In 2013, ESCAP's members adopted the Bangkok Declaration to enhance efforts towards deeper regional economic integration. Yet this document neither proposes a concrete modality or modalities of achieving deeper integration, nor provides a sense of distance of individual countries to a "perceived" integrated Asia-Pacific.This paper aims to comprehensively quantify recent integration efforts of economies in the Asia-Pacific region. We provide an "index of integration effort" based on twelve metrics that measure the relative distance of a given economy to the region as an economic entity. Generally, we find that while the region has trended towards becoming integrated in general, both the level of integration and integration effort are inconsistent among Asia-Pacific economies. We discuss potential applications and extensions of the index in developing our perspective of the region's economic and social dynamics.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.5-19
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• 1999

This paper identifies five factors that limited urban network formation in Northeast Asia over the past half millennium, questions the extent to which they are being overcome in the 1990s, and sketches a network of cities that could boost regionalism. It briefly traces the historical evolution of these factors, including comparisons with European integration, while focusing primarily on the policies of the 1990s that have affected their continuing role. First is the factor of closed national markets with weak regional integration. Second is the preeminence of administrative means of integration over commercial ones. Third is the character of localism, shackled by overcentralization and weak cross-border linkages. Fourth is the limited nature of internationalism, dominated by state catch-up policies with one-sided global involvement. Fifth is a lack of regional consciousness. Just as national urban integration was essential for regional networks to form, without regional integration it is difficult to contemplate Northeast Asian cities taking their rightful place in a global urban network. After noting the failures of the 1990s, the paper points to the potential role as dragon's heads for sub-regional urban networks of potential front-line cities: Tumen, Sapporo, Irkutsk, and what I call the Amur triangle. Also of interest are how the capitals of Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, and Tokyo will adjust to a transformed urban network. After all, their current skepticism must be overcome with a program that links the benefits on all sides in order to build trust in regionalism. This requires internationalism and symbols of a balanced approach to each country's needs.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.385-415
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• 2013

Inter-regional free trade agreements (FTAs) - notably between Asia and Latin America - are growing in numbers and complexity. There is an absence of an agreed methodology for empirical assessments on the content of FTAs and little research. This paper proposes a framework to assess liberalization in FTAs in goods and services and new trade policy issues relating to regulatory barriers. Next, it applies this framework to studying the 22 Asia-Latin America FTAs in existence. The findings suggest that Asia-Latin American FTAs have laid the foundations for inter-regional integration by liberalizing the trade in goods and services and reducing some regulatory barriers. Deepening FTAs and adopting structural reforms will enhance Asia-Latin American integration in the future.

• American Studies
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.99-131
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• 2018

The United States of America is privileged in that social stratification is not directly linked to the division of powers. Nonetheless, America endured the devastating Civil War only to consolidate her national identity when a nation was not defined. In fact, state governments preexisted as a sovereign long before the federal government came into existence as a national government. As a consequence, intergovernmental relations have persistently been contested long after the Civil War ended. In contrast, the European Union was founded on the political will to establish regional integration such that her member states would never repeat the bloodshed in catastrophic wars. Since the principle of subsidiarity precipitated political endeavor in regional integration, the EU developed into a bifurcated system of transnational and international organizations. In this paper, I evaluate the US and the EU by applying the perspective of federalism in which separation and integration are perennially at tension.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.303-325
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• 2023

This paper examines how APEC has transformed itself into an international forum for the vision of regional integration. It aims to quantify the documentation produced by the international organization and provide quantifiable evidence that aligns with prior knowledge rather than relying solely on intuition. For this purpose, I use various text mining techniques to extract multi-dimensional features from the text of APEC Leaders' Declarations from 1993 to 2023. In terms of interest and expectations for APEC as a forum, it is found that members have experienced two major peaks and troughs over the last three decades. It is found that the change point coincides with the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the tensions between the United States and China since 2017. To explore more various aspects of economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region, this study also considers how consistently APEC has been an international forum for addressing issues, which members are active, and how members have clustered based on their views of APEC.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.177-202
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• 2003

Balassian Approach of regional economic integration has been mainly aimed at improving conditions for regional trade since 1960s. After the financial crises of the late 1990s, however, the theoretical approach to regional integration will have to be a different one as regionalism have to offer enhanced protection against crises. The aim of this paper, above all, is to provide a theoretical framework for the emerging new monetary regionalism. Regions that wish to strengthen their co-operation in monetary and financial affairs today have the option of monetary regionalism without trade agreement. East Asian region will become an increasingly important domain within which to explore enhanced protection against financial crises. And as Korea seems to play a crucial role in building regional integration among ASEAN＋3(Korea, China and Japan) countries, alternative policy for Korean economy to be the North-east Asian Economic Base need to be schemed on the basis of Balassian as well as monetary regionalism.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.55-79
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• 2013

The objective of this article is to explore the economic relationship between China and the surrounding dynamic Asian economies. It delves into China's influence over the Asian economies and whether this relationship is a market-led or de facto symbiosis. The three principal channels of regional integration analyzed in this article are trade, FDI and vertically integrated production networks. They are essentially based on the activities of the private-sector in these economies. China methodically expanded and deepened its economic ties with the regional neighbors. At the present juncture, China's integration with the surrounding Asia is deep. Another issue that this article explores is the so-called China "threat" or "fear" in Asia. It implies that China is crowding out exports of the other Asian economies in the world market place. Also, as China has become the most attractive FDI destination among the developing countries, it is apprehended that China is receiving FDI at the expense of the Asian economies. These concerns were examined by several empirical studies, and the inference is that they are exaggerated. This article concludes that the private-sector business activities in China and other rapidly growing Asian economies were (and are) instrumental in bringing together the production structures and real economies. The result is both convergence and integration among the dynamic Asian economies. Over the years China and its Asian neighbors has developed a close and symbiotic economic relationship and a de facto regional integration.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2002.05b
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• pp.1187-1194
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• 2002

In this study, we have simulated regional climate over East Asia using dynamical downscaling For dynamic downscaling experiments for regional climate simulation, MM5method. with 27 km horizontal resolution and 18 layers of sigma-coordinate in vertical is nested within global-scale NCEP reanalysis data with 2.5。${\times}$2.5。 resolution in longitude and latitude. In regional simulation, January and July, 1979 monthly mean features have been obtained by both continuous integration and daily restart integration driven by updating the lateral boundary forcing at 6-hr intervals from the NCEP reanalysis data using a nudging scheme with the updating design of initial and boundary conditions in both continuous and restart integrations. In result, we may successfully generated regional detail features which might be forced by topography, lake, coastlines and land use distribution from a regional climate. There is no significant difference in monthly mean features either integrate continuously or integrate with daily restart. For climatologically long integration, the initial condition may not be significantly important. Accordingly, MM5 can be integrated for a long period without restart frequently, if a proper lateral boundary forcing is given.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.163-186
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• 2014

This paper argues that the formation of regional integration frameworks can be best understood as a dominant state's attempt to create a preferred regional framework in which it can exercise exclusive influence. In this context, it is important to observe not only which countries are included in a regional framework, but also which countries are excluded from it. For example, the distinct feature of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is its exclusion of China, and that of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is its exclusion of the United States (US). An exclusion of a particular country does not mean that the excluded country will perpetually remain outside the framework. In fact, TPP may someday include China, resulting from a policy of the US "engaging" or "socializing" China rather than "balancing" against it. However, the first step of such a policy is to establish a regional framework from which the target country of engagement is excluded.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.37-65
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• 2016

This research intends to investigate the progress made in East Asian bond market integration thus far. Price-based measures (AAD indicator and beta-convergence measure), quantity-based measures and econometric techniques (co-integration test, error correction model based Granger causality test) are employed in the analysis. Even though East Asian government bond markets have become more integrated since 2001, the differentials among the markets still remain significantly high. The bond market integration process seems slow. The convergence of bond markets sped up in 2003 and after the 2008 world financial crisis, implying the important role of government policies in integrating the regional bond markets. East Asian bond market integration may need more government-directed measures.