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Mercurio, Bryan --- "Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements in Asia: A Skeptic’s View" [ 2011] ELECD 468 ; in Buckley, P. Ross; Hu, Weixing Richard; Arner, W. Douglas (eds), "East Asian Economic Integration" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: East Asian Economic Integration

Editor(s): Buckley, P. Ross; Hu, Weixing Richard; Arner, W. Douglas

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849808682

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements in Asia: A Skeptic’s View

Author(s): Mercurio, Bryan

Number of pages: 29

Extract:

6. Bilateral and regional trade
agreements in Asia: a skeptic's view
Bryan Mercurio

INTRODUCTION

The per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of almost every Asian
nation has rapidly risen throughout the last three decades.1 During this
time, intra-Asian regional trade has also grown at a brisk rate ­ in large
part due to the enhanced specialization among regional industries and the
interlinking of regional production networks which facilitate production
sharing among and between companies.2 Without doubt, liberalization
commitments at the multilateral level have greatly assisted the process of
deeper regional integration. So too has the corresponding expansion of
bilateral and regional trade agreements (RTAs)3 between and among
Asian nations.4 In some areas, liberalization commitments made as part
of intra-Asian RTAs have been critical to the process of increased regional
trade. Some commentators even go as far as saying that RTAs deserve the
credit for increasing regional trade and increasing per capita GDP. It is the
contention of this chapter, however, that the role of RTAs in expanding

1 Statistics can be viewed at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/databases.htm,

accessed 2 September 2010.
2 See generally Prema-chandra Athukorala and Archanun Kohpaiboon, `Intra-

Regional Trade in East Asia: The Decoupling Fallacy, Crisis, and Policy Challenges',
(2009) ADBI Working Paper Series No. 177, accessed 2 September 2010, http://
www.adbi.org/files/2009.12.11.wp177.intra.regional.trade.east.asia.pdf.
3 This chapter uses the abbreviation `RTA' when generally referencing

bilateral and ...