Economic Integration Initiatives Research Articles

African Economic Integration Initiatives and the Challenge of Responsible Business Conducts: Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Provisions in African Regional Trade and Investment Agreements

African Economic Integration Initiatives and the Challenge of Responsible Business Conducts: Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Provisions in African Regional Trade and Investment Agreements

African Economic Integration Initiatives and the Challenge of Responsible Business Conducts: Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Provisions in African Regional Trade and Investment Agreements

African Economic Integration Initiatives and the Challenge of Responsible Business Conducts: Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Provisions in African Regional Trade and Investment Agreements

General Equilibrium Trade Policy Analysis among One Belt One Road Nations Using Structural Gravity Framework

Currently, the world is witnessing one of China’s most significant economic integration initiatives–One Belt One Road (OBOR). This article aims to evaluate the general equilibrium (GE) effects of this initiative on member nations. The structural gravity model is used in this study to perform the counterfactual analysis while analysing the conditional and general equilibrium effects of the trade policy of border removal on international trade flow among the member countries. The estimates suggest varied strade gains for the member countries in response to the trade policy changes. Most Asian countries are witnessing an increase in producers’ prices and therefore gaining more from globalisation. We also deduced that the member countries had reached half of their potential to trade gains, with most developing countries witnessing a decrease in multilateral trade resistance (MTR). The findings of this study implicate a debate for the policymakers over continuing support for further trade integration. JEL Codes: C21, F15, F17

Regional integration and the regional risk paradox

How does regional economic integration affect the risk exposure of multinational enterprises (MNEs)? Investigating firm regionalization patterns, I uncover evidence of the regional risk paradox: as MNEs regionalize to exploit the lower risk environment offered by regional economic integration initiatives, they ultimately increase their regional risk exposure by deepening their commitment and embeddedness in regional business networks. Informed by the Theory of the Regional Multinationals and by theories of regional integration, I employ a social network lens to investigate the evolving structure of business relationships in regions governed by different regional integration frameworks. I then explore the implications of these evolving relationship network structures on the transformation of regional business risk. I find that moderately integrated regions lower transaction costs to moderately low levels, thus encouraging moderate MNE regionalization. This leads to moderate MNE embeddedness in loosely coupled regional business networks and a moderate increase in regional risk. By contrast, deeply integrated regions lower regional administrative distance to very low levels and encourage intense MNE regionalization. This leads to deep MNE embeddedness in tightly coupled regional business networks and a significant increase in regional risk.

What Does ASEAN Economic Community Bring to Older Workers? Examining Inequality in Old Age in Thailand’s Fast-Ageing Society

The ASEAN Economic Community is envisaged to promote economic integration initiatives to create a single market across Southeast Asian member countries. It is acknowledged that the intergovernmental initiatives need to be accommodative to national and regional contexts. Thailand, as a pivotal and active partnership, endeavours to facilitate economic transformation and regional integration within the ASEAN and cope with population ageing in Thai society. Since Thailand has been the third most rapidly ageing country in the world, demographic changes pose new challenges for how to achieve persistent economic growth, productive employment and decent work. This article is based on a qualitative approach to investigate the emergent inequality within and across age cohorts shaped by the AEC structural forces, as well as utilizes reliable secondary data to formulate argumentation, including academic publications, policy analysis, scientific reports. We are particularly concerned about the heterogeneity and poverty in old age from the perspective of cumulative advantages/disadvantages. In conclusion, this article suggests policy recommendations of mitigating inequality in old age and advocates a critical lens to examine how political economic structure shapes older individuals in the labour market.

Change and Continuity in the European Neighbourhood Policy: The Ukraine Crisis as a Critical Juncture

ABSTRACTThe Ukraine crisis presented a severe geopolitical challenge to European Union (EU) policies in the neighbourhood. This is because during the course of the crisis, Russia openly challenged the EU’s economic and political integration initiatives in the region using economic, informational and eventually military means. As such, the crisis and its escalation has had ramifications across the EU in the fields of security, trade, energy security and regional cooperation. In the wake of the crisis, a clear rhetorical break with previous EU policy was announced by various key actors to respond to these challenges. Yet both the rhetoric and declared ambition for reform in response to the events is not matched by a major revision of actual policy objectives or policy tools. The question at the core of this article is how to explain the changes made to the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) following the Ukraine crisis. In order to provide an answer this article will build on historical institutionalism, exploring how two key historical institutionalist insights improve our understanding of the policy changes made to the ENP after the Ukraine crisis: (i) the institutional ‘effects’ and plasticity of the ENP institutions and (ii) temporal contingency. In doing so, this article takes issue with two tendencies in the current literature on policy change in the ENP. First, the lack of analytical engagement with the very notion of policy change, which throughout the literature is rarely defined or conceptualized. Second, the prevailing assumption that one should not be surprised that in the case of ENP reform after the Ukraine crisis there has been little change, due to the prevalence of policy inertia. It is argued that this oversimplifies both policy continuity and policy change. By paying particular attention to the decision-making process preceding change, this article thus aims to shed new light on the issue of EU foreign policy change.

The "Asia-Pacific Dream": Is China Using Economic Integration Initiatives as Ideological Weapons? – On The Link Between Free Trade Agreements, Soft Power and "Universal Values"

This article examines the function and role of the Asia-Pacific Dream (including the FTAAP) in China's foreign policy strategy by analysing the speech in which Xi Jinping promoted this dream, and creating a link between China's push for regional economic integration, soft power strategy and universal values. While China is promoting this concept and the FTAAP to increase its influence in the region, the U.S. have also been rebalancing to through different means, such as its push for the TPP. These two free trade agreements (FTA), though not mutually exclusive, are considered to be directed against each other, indicating a struggle for influence in the region, and also seem to entail an ideological agenda. As both the Asia-Pacific Dream and the U.S. pivot to Asia are connected to major FTA's, this paper argues that the motives for promoting these FTAs go far beyond economic interests; the research suggests that they are used to increase soft power in the region as well as to influence the discourse on universal values.

Political-economy dynamics matter most to Africa's regional integration

The world economy is increasingly integrated, a development marked by the dominance of global and regional value chains. This has been accompanied by a proliferation of bilateral, regional, mega-regional and cross-regional economic cooperation agreements and integration initiatives.

Economic Integration Problem of Turkey: An Evaluation about Shanghai Cooperation Organization within the Frame of Alternative Searches

When the economic developments analyzed after World War II, the economic integration movements, which include the liberalization of countries’ economic relations between each other, draw attention. In terms of world trade, globalization tendencies on one hand and regionalization tendencies on the other hand are being experienced. While global trade is shaped by Customs Tariffs and GATT, which propose the elimination of the limitations for customs tariffs and other trade limitations between countries, regional economic integrations are shaped differently between the countries that are geographically close to each other. Turkey has been found in the global and Original Research Article Eroglu et al.; BJEMT, 13(2): 1-18, 2016; Article no.BJEMT.24230 2 regional economic integration initiatives; and it’s in the negotiation phase for the EU membership, while the country is already a member of World Trade Organization (WTO), The Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation (D-8), Organization of the Black Sea Economic Organization (BSEC), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The fact that Turkey’s attempts for global-regional economic and political integrations did not give the expected results has brought different searches. This study contains an evaluation of Turkey’s seek for new integrations as determinants of democracy in the scale of democratic index, which consists of some criteria like free and fair elections, pluralism, good governance, political participation, political culture and freedom, and an evaluation between EU and SCO alternatives. In the light of the assessment it has been concluded that SCO is not a suitable alternative for Turkey because of the fact that its priority is zone’s safety, it does not contain economic cooperation and its inefficient democratic foundation comparing with the EU. According to these facts, Turkey should continue with the EU membership negotiations and it should show necessary sensitivity for adjusting to Copenhagen political criteria which forms EU’s political criteria, and Maastricht economic criteria which forms EU’s economic criteria.

Does Kaizen create backward knowledge transfer to Southeast Asian firms?

Globalization and economic integration initiatives in Southeast Asia encourage local supplier firms in Southeast Asia to enter foreign and local leading firms' supply chains and obtain new knowledge. However, most Southeast Asian suppliers cannot fulfill potential buyers' requirements for quality, cost, and delivery control. This study investigates whether Kaizen (Japanese style of continuous improvement) practices facilitate backward knowledge transfer to local suppliers from their buyers (i.e., knowledge transfer from a buyer to its supplier). This study also examines if a firm's buyer-transfer knowledge also promotes knowledge transfer to its supplier. Empirical analyses provide evidence of the association of Kaizen activities with backward knowledge transfer for process improvement but do not show the association with backward knowledge transfer for buyer–supplier product co-design. Backward knowledge transfer to a supplier stimulates backward knowledge transfer from the supplier to its supplier for process improvement and product co-design.

ASEAN’s initiatives for regional economic integration and the implications for maritime logistics reforms

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to estimate the economic impact of reducing logistics cost on the demand for port throughput in the context of Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) regional economic integration and to realize the potential economic gains of the maritime logistics reform in the region.Design/methodology/approach– The main part of this paper is to formulate conversion coefficients for containerized cargo to estimate the impacts of logistics reform on the demand for port throughput. These conversion coefficients, then have been used into a dynamic computational general equilibrium model using Global Trade Analysis Project database to explore the impact of logistics cost.Findings– The study demonstrates that logistics efficiency is a challenge for ASEAN economic integration, providing significant implications for maritime logistics reforms.Research limitations/implications– This study assumes uniform improvements of 5 and 10 percent in the logistics sector for all countries due to lack of detailed data on the logistics sectors in ASEAN countries.Practical implications– The findings of this study could help ASEAN policymakers for deeper understanding of efficient maritime logistics in realizing the economic gains from its regional economic integration initiatives.Originality/value– Although there are many descriptive studies on the importance of logistics efficiency in improving international competitiveness in a country or a region, these are not supported by quantitative assessment in the case of ASEAN. This study addresses the dearth of empirical evidence based on real data on trade and maritime cargo flows. This study contributes to highlighting that ASEAN countries should reform their logistics policies and practices.

COINTEGRATION OF MONETARY POLICY IN GCC COUNTRIES AS MEASURE OF ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

Economic integration in the world is not always an explicit and intentional process. For some regions we are able to observe unintentional coordination of economic policies that results from following similar institutional and legal solutions. One of such cases can be recognized in the nominal sector of the national economy. As a consequence, a group of countries may be forming a de-facto currency union. It could alternatively compose an OCA without any need for forced nominal convergence. This paper focuses on monetary policy stance and its developments in the period from 1981 to 2013 of a very special group of resource-based economies. The GCC countries share many similarities in the underlying exchange rate regime solutions. They are in the same time following some explicit economic integration initiatives. It happens, however, that due to the financial turmoil after 2008, many of the integration processes have been reversed, or stopped. An empirical research tries to answer a question of the extent to which the integration process in nominal sector has been developing. For this purpose the monetary policy stance correlation is measured. Observing its developments, with a cointegration analysis in a standard (non-structural) VAR model, delivers interesting insights into an issue of the GCC as an OCA. With statistical data provided by the World Bank (WDI Database) it is possible to observe significant convergence in monetary policy stance among all but one of the GCC countries. This study draws attention to a broader picture of a region that has potential of benefiting from a common market. However, not all GCC countries seem to be suited for economic integration in nominal sector. It is Bahrain that shows significant divergence for the whole period covered. There may be many country-specific factors, but persistence of asymmetry in monetary policy in this particular case allows for skeptical thoughts. If the GCC initiatives are continued, the economic integration will be more challenging in the new situation. As the observed convergence in monetary policy stance has been present from late 1970s one could suggest that it could have been a non-intentional process, but a result of similar exchange rate regimes. However, the latter divergence has been a result of conscious changes in the economic policies that affect the nominal sector. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.9.12807

Beyond Market Access?: The Anatomy of ASEAN’s Preferential Trade Agreements

This article seeks to enhance the understanding of ASEAN's external Preferential Trade Agreements (PTA) in context of the recent growth of economic regionalism in East Asia. The article advances a comparison of the content of ASEAN's five plurilateral PTAs with China, Korea, Japan, India, Australia, and New Zealand with the status quo of ASEAN's internal economic integration. In a second step, the article compares ASEAN's plurilateral agreements and ASEAN's internal integration with the content of six bilateral PTAs that individual ASEAN Member States have concluded with Japan. The empirical findings demonstrate that the ambition of ASEAN's five plurilateral agreements finds its upper limits in the substantive content of ASEAN's internal economic integration. Within these limits, the coverage and depth of commitments varies considerably and corresponds to the intensity of trade between ASEAN and the respective external partner. Moreover, the comparison shows that bilateral PTAs between six individual ASEAN Member States and Japan go significantly beyond the status quo of ASEAN's internal integration and exceed the coverage and depth of ASEAN's external plurilateral PTAs. The author contends that the coverage and depth of ASEAN Member States' plurilateral PTAs is limited by the structural heterogeneity of the signatories and, as a result, a relatively high diversity of policy preferences. Bilateral PTAs between ASEAN Member States and the same external partners result in deeper commitments than the plurilateral accords because of both a higher common denominator among the parties to the agreements and the free-rider problem that persists in plurilateral negotiation settings. Moreover, it is argued that the coverage and depth of the agreements is a function of the intensity of trade among the parties: high trade intensity results in deeper and more comprehensive agreements that tackle twenty-first century trade issues, whereas low trade intensity results in shallow agreements that aim to reduce first-generation trade barriers. These hypotheses, which are fully verified by the empirical findings of this study, allow for conclusions about the role of ASEAN Member States - collectively and individually - in current and future economic integration initiatives.

Legitimacy of Regional Economic Integration Courts in Africa

Abstract The expansion of economic integration initiatives in Africa has been accompanied by an increase in the number of regional courts currently operating on the continent. Four of these courts have been particularly active, spinning off judgments on issues ranging from the legality of national elections to the free movement of persons. There is a modest but growing body of scholarship on the jurisprudence of the courts. However, to date, there has been little or no attempt in the academic literature to examine the legitimacy of the courts. The issue of the courts’ legitimacy is important because of the potential impact of their judgments on national legal systems and policies. This paper examines that issue. While acknowledging that the concept of legitimacy is not free of debate, it identifies a number of factors that influence the legitimacy of international courts and applies them to the regional courts. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at a workshop on the legitimacy of international courts at the Centre for International and Comparative Law, Duke University School of Law.

The Russian State, Eurasianism, and Civilisations in the Contemporary Global Political Economy

This article demonstrates the emerging significance of concepts pertaining to culture and civilisation in imagining the global political economy (GPE). It focuses on how certain Russian thinkers and officials employ such concepts to critique American hegemony, to consolidate and defend Russia's statist political apparatus, and to obtain legitimacy for Russian state conduct both at home and abroad. Russian debates over Eurasianism, civilisational difference and geopolitical identity were common in the 1990s and have filtered into Putin era Russian state discourse about Eurasian political and economic integration initiatives. Historicist analysis of world orders, a method inspired by the work of Robert Cox, is employed here to understand how intersubjective ideas derived from previous epochs are mobilised and transformed by social and political actors for contemporary political projects. Organic intellectuals of the Russian state articulate and legitimise state-sanctioned difference in an era in which once widely presumed integrative globalisation and American hegemony are being questioned.

Does economic integration stimulate capital mobility? An analysis of four regional economic communities in Africa

It is well known that high levels of regional integration enable portfolio risk diversification and capital mobility. While there have been a number of empirical attempts to verify the presence of capital mobility using the Feldstein–Horioka (FH) approach, none of them to the best of our knowledge have explicitly examined capital mobility changes across regional economic groupings in Africa, analyzing sub-samples to compare effects of pre-versus post integration. Filling this gap in the literature, this paper analyzes how some major regional economic integration initiatives, such as SACU (South African Customs Union), UEMOA (West African Economic and Monetary Union), COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) and ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States)) have influenced capital mobility in their member countries. To estimate the investment and savings relationship, we use Pedroni's (2004) fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) panel cointegration method, applying to a sample of 25 African countries for which annual data is available from 1960 to 2009. To assess robustness of our results, we also employ the fixed effects, random effects and Mark and Sul's (2003) dynamic OLS (DOLS) methods. Our findings suggest that international capital mobility has only slightly increased in the African countries due to these agreements.

Beyond Market Access? The Anatomy of ASEAN's Preferential Trade Agreements

This study seeks to enhance the understanding of ASEAN’s external preferential trade agreements (PTA) in context of the recent growth of economic regionalism in East Asia. First, the paper compares the content of ASEAN’s five plurilateral PTAs with China, Korea, Japan, India, Australia, and New Zealand with the status quo of ASEAN’s internal economic integration. In a second step, the paper compares ASEAN’s plurilateral agreements and ASEAN’s internal integration with the content of six bilateral PTAs that individual ASEAN member states have concluded with Japan. The empirical findings demonstrate that the ambition of ASEAN’s five plurilateral agreements finds its upper limits in the substantive content of ASEAN’s internal economic integration. Within these limits, the coverage and depth of commitments varies considerably in correlation with the intensity of trade between ASEAN and the respective external partner. Moreover, the comparison shows that bilateral PTAs between six individual ASEAN member states and Japan go significantly beyond the status quo of ASEAN’s internal integration and exceed the coverage and depth of ASEAN’s external plurilateral PTAs. The author contends that the coverage and depth of ASEAN member states’ plurilateral PTAs is limited by the structural heterogeneity of the signatories and, as a result, a relatively high diversity of policy preferences. Bilateral PTAs between ASEAN member states and the same external partners result in deeper commitments than the plurilateral accords, because of both a higher common denominator among the parties to the agreements and the free-rider problem that persists in plurilateral negotiation settings. Moreover, it is argued that the coverage and depth of the agreements is a function of the intensity of trade among the parties: high trade intensity results in deeper and more comprehensive agreements that tackle 21st century trade issues, whereas low trade intensity results in shallow agreements that aim to reduce first-generation trade barriers. These hypotheses, which are fully verified by the empirical findings of this study, allow for important conclusions about the role of ASEAN member states - collectively and individually - in current and future economic integration initiatives such as ASEAN 6, the TPP, or EU-ASEAN PTA negotiations.

Regional integration and south-south cooperation in health in Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper analyzes whether south-south cooperation is legitimately a recent practice or merely an improved version of previous regional integration processes in Latin America and the Caribbean. The authors reviewed and systematized the historic development of subregional integration processes in Latin America and the Caribbean and focused on health cooperation in the following contexts: the Central American Integration System, the Andean Community of Nations, the Caribbean Community, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, the Southern Common Market, and the Union of South American Nations. The study concludes that the conceptual and methodologic foundations of south-south cooperation in health were born from and nurtured by the processes of regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean. This paper posits that regional political and economic integration initiatives bring potential benefits to the health sector and act as an important mechanism to develop south-south cooperation in this domain. The study recommends furthering this type of research to provide information that will allow national and multilateral agencies, or other stakeholders, to formulate and implement better policies for international health cooperation that target reducing inequities and promoting health and well-being for all people.

<b> A atual pouco compreendida política externa brasileira </b> 10.5102/uri.v9i1.1332

Instead of taking advantage of increasing Brazilian international projection and involve the country in matters that are relevant for the group of actors in the international system, it seems that the country´s insertion goes confusedly in the opposite direction. Since the beginning of the current decade, Brazil has maintained evident cordiality for the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and more recently Iran. As a consequence, Brazil is increasing dialogue with countries and involving itself in themes with a high level of insecurity and uncertainty mainly for the other decision maker actors. In doing so it seems that the Brazilian Diplomacy is suffering of an identity crisis. These examples when are taken individually give a certain impression and provoke criticism, which is something totally normal, considering that the new Brazilian project for its foreign affairs has never been explained or discussed widely. But on the other hand, if these same examples are analyzed together and as parts of a broad scenario everyone can observe what is behind such Brazilian actions and which message the country wants to give. After intense discussions and the frustrated project to create Americas Free Trade Area, which was launched by the US in 1994, the US government seeked to strengthen its presence in the South American continent. Slowly the country started to sew a net of bilateral free trade agreements with Central and South American countries. It made its military presence possible in the Andean and Amazon region by the Plan Colombia. It seeked cooperation with Paraguay to set up military bases in that country what would let the US close to Itaipu the world´s biggest dam. They also reinstalled the US 4th Fleet in order to facilitate monitoring the Brazilian coastal hydrocarbon sources. And the US also hurried up to support the call for anticipated elections in Honduras by the established government after depriving the elected president. It is not surprising such approximation. The gas, the oil, the rainforest, the water, the huge consumer market make part of the greed of a superpower, it doesn´t matter who it is. And with all these movements taking place in an area surrounding Brazil´s territory, it is not surprising a Brazilian reaction to show that there is a counterpoint in the South American area. Brazil has realized the maneuvers and has decided that it cannot accept such interference in its natural region. And all of this is mainly taking place in a moment when the south area of the continent expresses almost unanimously and with a renewed vigor its support to economic integration initiatives in the region and condemning the old politics of aggression against nations.

The Political Economy of Trade Integration in South Asia: The Role of India

The South Asian regional trade integration process to date has generated only limited enthusiasm. It suffers from significant shortcomings, primarily on account of a very cautious approach adopted to achieve the ultimate objective of ‘free trade’ within the region. In turn, this has led to a fragmentation of the integration process, with some of the partners of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) bloc opting for a speedier and more liberal bilateral process with India. India’s engagement remains the critical feature as the single most important trading partner for almost all the other South Asian countries. However, the dynamics of Indian economic integration initiatives too have been changing rapidly, whereby it is looking increasingly to strengthen its economic relations with the wider Asian region. In this context, the question of India’s willingness to give leadership to carry the rest of South Asia as the bridge that connects the region to East Asia needs to be examined. The current evidence suggests that India has attempted to do so via a host of bilateral and regional arrangements, but that the divergences in strategic interests amongst SAARC countries has left Pakistan on the margins of an evolving scheme of overlapping trade initiatives in South Asia. Thus, while something approximating ‘free trade’ in South Asia appears to be taking shape, it is unlikely to take the form of an inclusive South Asian regional integration process envisaged by SAARC.