The authors employ the structural model of trade and investment from Anderson, Larch and Yotov (2017) in order to quantify the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and trade liberalization on exports and real GDP per capita in the Asia-Pacific region. Using a dataset of 89 countries for 2011, which covers more than 97 percent of the trade and investment activity in the ESCAP member countries form the Asia-Pacific region, the authors find that FDI has had a strong but heterogeneous impact on the economic performance of the countries in this region.

Cross-border paperless trade is increasingly important to generate economic gains in a digitalised economy. Several developing and least developed countries will need to modernise their domestic laws and regulations to facilitate cross-border electronic transmissions, particularly to promote cloud computing and electronic payments.

Recent restoration of democracy in Myanmar is one of the most important developments in the country’s history and potentially of large significance for the region.Owing to its strategic position, Myanmar connects Asia’s three big markets—Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, and India. Since 2011, Myanmar has embarked on a path of political and economic reforms, paving the way for unlocking the country’s large potential.

Using primary evidence for 146 Indian manufacturing firms, I examine the types of lobbying strategies(lobbying defined as attempts to communicate information to political actors) for trade policy influence and what drives firm choice for these strategies. Firm scan lobby collectively in a group (Join Hands), lobby individually as a single firm (WalkAlone), or adopt a ‘DualStrategy’ that is a unique combination of collective and individual lobbying.

The interface between trade and Internet governance is one of the most complex policy challenges in the current-day digital economy. This working paper highlights several observations and findings on the delicate and complex relationship between international trade and the Internet.

This paper analyses the trends in trade flows and trade policies in environmental goods (EGs) and related serv ices, with a focus on the Asia - Pacific Economies. The paper finds that the region is a dominant player in both exports and imports of EGs in the world, contributing to 42% and 44%, respectively. Renewable energy related goods dominate both the export and import basket of EGs in the region.

Trade costs matter, in particular for small island developing countries, such as Pacific island Countries (PICs), given their economic size and remoteness from the world markets. This paper examines whether PICs’ performance in cross-border trade costs is informed by the extent of their participation in regional trade agreements (RTAs). The paper begins by analyzing PICs’ membership in five RTAs, focusing on trade facilitation-related provisions committed through those agreements, which have the potential to reduce cross-border trade costs.

The scope and depth of bilateral and regional preferential trade agreements (RTAs) negotiated over the past 15 years has expanded beyond traditional market access and preferential tariffs to include provisions on a wide range of issues, including trade facilitation. This study is a first attempt to measure the extent to which RTA provisions related to those featured in the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) contribute to reducing trade costs. Inclusion of such provisions in RTAs does not appear to systematically result in their implementation.

This paper offers a review, analysis and assessment of the status of services liberalization in North and Central Asia. Following a brief introduction about the region and its economic context, this study provides an overview of the binding commitments undertaken by transition economies under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and an evaluation of how they compare to domestic policy reform, with a focus on the three transition economies that most recently acceded to the WTO: Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan.

The health care for elderly population remains an important concern in the two populated economies of India and China. This paper provides an attempt to determine the extent of population aging in India and China and subsequently determine the ageing impacts on the aggregate as well as health care expenditures in these two countries, separately for the rural and urban areas. The respective state level (provincial) data from the most recent census information reveal wide regional differences in the levels of population aging in both India and China.