Trade Liberalization In The Pacific Basin

First published in 1998, this volume brings together contributions from leading economic analysts around the Pacific Basin, reporting on their research into three of the most important issues facing the region: trade, investment flows, and the environmental effects of economic growth. Each of these issues has important domestic and multilateral ramifications and the Pacific Basin's status as the world's most dynamic economic region makes this analysis relevant to policy makers and researchers in all countries. The collection is unusual in offering appraisals from economists representing the principal economies of the region. Among other contributions in the book are insights into the forces animating regional trade and investment, detailed assessment of leading East Asian economies such as those of China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and Singapore, and innovative research on economy-environment linkages.

Further U.S. trade liberalization will lead to both internal U.S. adjustments and external adjustments in the rest of the world economy. Most of the potential future liberalization relates to textiles and apparel. While the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing and China's WTO accession influence the path of future liberalization significantly, the timing and extent of future liberalization is unknown. With these observations in hand, a dynamic model of sequential trade negotiations is sketched out, in which countries valuing market access may participate in regional and/or multilateral negotiations simultaneously, and in which countries may seek to accelerate or delay the conclusion of negotiations in order to increase or decrease the present value of trade diversion. If access to U.S. textile and apparel markets is important for U.S. trading partners, inferences can be made about the incentives of various partners for acceleration or delay in particular negotiations, based on a combination of historical data and simulation results. In particular, the difference in incentives facing China and other Asian countries vis-a-vis Latin America is discussed.

Pacific Basin Industries in Distress

The countries of the South Pacific have struggled to generate sustainable economic growth since their independence. Interventionist policies have failed in the past here, as they have in all other regions. Business and government leaders in this region are now beginning to acknowledge - as has happened in many other developing country regions over the past two decades - that major reforms are needed to put their economies onto a higher growth path. This study examines the growth record of key Pacific island economies and identifies the reasons for their relatively poor performance. It then looks at the process of globalization that is affecting those and indeed all economies increasingly; and the role the WTO has played in that process.