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B Prema-chandra Athukorala, Australian National University: b This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of production networks in Europe and East Asia in the global context, with emphasis on determinants of export patterns and intra-regional linkages. In addition, data relating to intermediate goods (based on the BEC classification) significantly overstate the magnitude of bilateral trade links within global production networks of resource-rich countries, such as Malaysia and Indonesia. No attempt has been made here to modify it to suit analyzing trade flows within global production networks informed by the theory of global production sharing (Jones [4]; Jones and Kirzkowski [5]; and many other papers). [Extracted from the article]

The article examine potential slowdown growth in international production networks in East Asia. Topics discussed include comprehensive analysis of trade patterns using data disaggregation; decline in trade in primary goods and sluggish growth of trade in chemicals and resource based producers as the cause of slow growth of international trade; and incorporation of the price-lowering effect of global production sharing in the analysis of balance of trade.

B Fukunari Kimura, Keio University and Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia: b The comparison between East Asia (EA) and the European Union (EU) in the development of network trade is an important topic to be investigated. First, it is customary to use mirror import data, rather than directly using export data, in gravity equation exercises, but the revised version of the paper still seems to use export data. Lastly, we can easily imagine that the difference between EA and the EU is substantially due to industrial biases, particularly electronics for EA and automobiles for the EU. [Extracted from the article]

With the increase of cross-Strait economic activity, the interaction between Taiwanese business people and the Chinese government has gradually changed. As Taiwanese investment grew in volume, so did the number and frequency of contacts between the parties; a more institutionalised form regulating these contacts was established as a result. Nowadays Taiwanese businessmen have become an identifiable factor in Chinese governmental policy implementation; the process also has far-reaching implications. This paper argues that Taiwanese capital has become a Chinese governmental security asset and examines the importance of this factor when discussing conventional government/business interaction. This paper concludes that a superior national interest guides the warm welcome given by the Chinese government to Taiwanese businessmen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries in East Asia (EA) have made a great deal of progress in integrating their economies since the early 1990s. There has been a sustained increase in intra-regional trade in EA. On finance, however, regional financial integration has been lagging behind trade integration and EA has reached out to global financial markets to effect deeper global integration. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of intra-regional and extra-regional financial integration on changes in the pattern of EA's business cycle since 1990 to see whether there is any ground for "decoupling" of EA from the United States and the EU. On trade relations, the empirical results show that deepening trade integration contributes to more synchronized output movements among EA countries. There is also evidence that financial integration enhances more synchronization of output, but because its impact is not strong, the extra-regional integration does not necessarily dispute the prediction that EA's output movement has become more idiosyncratic than before, and therefore less closely tied with that of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to ascertain whether direct macroeconomic linkages exist between some East Asian (EA) countries on the one hand and the United States (US) and Europe on the other, based upon quarterly real gross domestic product (GDP) series spanning from the early 1990s. Long-run and short-run lead-lag relations are explored within a trivariate modeling framework. Contrary to popular belief, the empirical evidence suggests generally either very nominal or no direct links at all between these EA countries and the US in terms of GDP. Direct links with Europe are completely ruled out. All these would allude to a very limited susceptibility of these EA economies to shocks in the US and Europe, barring a global economic crisis of catastrophic proportions. The growing belief that if China sneezes, the world catches the flu is also not borne out by the empirical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of production networks has changed the structure of international trade, which is characterized by a large share of intra-regional trade flows and a rising value of intermediate goods trade or network trade between countries within the same region. This paper investigates the change in impact of trade determinants with the formation of regional production networks. At the global level, the results show that intermediate goods exports are more sensitive to trade barriers than total goods exports. At the regional level, the comparison reveals that, despite the efforts directed toward export market diversification in East Asia, the region is still more dependent on other regions' economic conditions than the European Union is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper describes how the U.S.–China trade tensions affect Indonesia's trade and investment. The direct impacts come through increasing uncertainties, lower world demand, and diverted East Asian regional production networks. The indirect impacts can be observed in trade and investment reallocations. Amidst the tension, in 2018, the Indonesian economy grew 5.17 percent with reserves of 6.7 months of imports. Its trade with the United States and China grew by 7.5 percent and 23.5 percent, respectively. Although creating opportunities for Indonesia in the short run, trade tensions will repress the world economy. Indonesia understands that trade openness will improve productivity and we believe it will continue its reforms to be more open and integrated into the world economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The One Belt One Road (OBOR) project is perhaps China's most significant international relations initiative in recent times. It is based on openness, harmony, inclusivity, mutual benefit and market operations and aims to connect the economically vibrant East Asia and the developed Europe by land and by sea, and in the process, it brings growth and development to tens of countries along the modern Silk routes. In this paper, we compare the impact of the main initiatives of OBOR, namely enhancements in physical infrastructure and improvements in border administration, on the trade of countries that have signed on to this project, especially countries along the six economic corridors. We find overwhelming evidence that shows improvements in border administration has the greatest impact on exports of corridor countries. Although physical infrastructure is important for trade, the Chinese government should place equal attention to improvements in trade facilitation to ensure trade routes operate seamlessly across the various corridors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a general discussion on potential slowdown growth in international production networks in East Asia. Topics discussed include information on increase in domestic production of parts and components contributed to decline the export of it at the global level; opportunities for export-oriented industrialization; and information on the increase in intermediate goods trade.

Presents a discussion of the outlook for trade patterns in the Pacific Rim. Shift from bulk to non-bulk commodities; China as a leading player in the region; Importance of transportation.

The article comments on Prema-chandra Athukorala's paper on the global product-sharing network as the key to explaining East Asian trade. It talks about the issue of trade characteristics in three areas, namely data, econometric analysis, and foreign direct investment views of components trade. It warns against misunderstandings in data aggregation, which is said to suffer from fallacy of composition. On econometrics, it suggests bilateral trade flows instead of trade with the world to delineate the nature of intra-regional trade characteristics.

Business groups played an important role in the economic development of East Asian countries. Yet business groups in East Asia face an uncertain future. Following the Asian Crisis, foreign creditors and investors have demanded that business groups have more transparent operations and stronger corporate governance. At the same time, as governments in East Asia have loosened trade barriers, business groups have become subject to intense competition in domestic markets. This paper argues that business groups can survive or even prosper by taking initiatives in corporate restructuring. This paper also highlights some areas for further research on business groups in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to develop a multi-commodity network model to analyse the flow of containers within the Asia Pacific context. The model is used to evaluate the impact of container throughput in Asia's port by varying terminal handling charges and turnaround time. The three main regions analysed are north-east Asia, east Asia (Chinese port region) and south east Asia. Using the model, it could be shown that Busan port, which is an important transhipment hub in north-east Asia, could boost the container activities in the north-eastern part of China by improving its service quality. It is also found that the efficiency of the land link between Hong Kong and mainland China plays a crucial role for the future of Hong Kong port. While Singapore port maintains its position as a transhipment hub in south-east Asia, there would be expected competition from neighbouring low costs ports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in the relationship between East Asian countries and prospects for further cooperation are discussed, together with analysis of the driving forces for proliferation of free trade areas (FTAs) and preferential trade arrangements(PTAs), as well as the different types of arrangements. The evolution of the key features of such economic cooperation agreements are outlined and the challenges and issues facing more extensive East Asian economic integration are reviewed. The paper concludes with recommendations for bringing about a viable, effective East Asian economic community that will benefi t member countries and contribute positively to global trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades there have been extensive empirical and theoretical studies of the determination of intra-industry trade (IIT), but mostly for the industrialized countries. This paper aims to assess the trends and pattern of intra-industry trade and structural adjustment in China's manufacturing sector associated with its trade liberalization using data spanning from 1990 to 2000. In particular, we distinguish intra-industry trade as either horizontally or vertically differentiated, and examine how the various country-specific factors affect the intensity of China's horizontally and vertically differentiated intra-industry trade with its major trading partners, and how trade liberalization changes the pattern of China's IIT and integration with the East Asian region. These issues have important policy implications for product differentiation strategy and labour adjustment. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article summarizes the discussion on East Asia's production networks and trade patterns as regionalization or globalization. Siow Yue Chia says differences in the degree of network trade exist in the study's industries, like more network trade in electronics than in motor vehicles. Shigeyuki Abe believes that a study of the extent and causes of differences in network trade between industries would be an interesting research. John Knight thinks that low labor costs has made China the main center for assembling which could end in the next decade.

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By assessing the sustainability of regional trade agreements (RTAs) for East Asia, we quantitatively evaluate the likely impact of proposed East Asian RTA strategies on the East Asian economies and the world economy with respect to consumption, production, volume of trade and terms of trade effects by applying a multi-country and multi-sector computable general equilibrium model. These strategies include: (i) the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA: a being-left-alone strategy); (ii) an ASEAN Hub RTA (a hub-and-spoke type of overlapping RTA strategy); (iii) the AFTA versus a China–Japan–Korea RTA (a duplicating or competing RTA strategy); and (iv) an ASEAN+3 RTA (an expansionary RTA strategy). We find that an expansionary ASEAN+3 RTA could be a sustainable policy option because the members’ gains would be significantly positive, with more equitably distributed gains between members than when using other strategies. The effect on world welfare would also be positive and the negative effect on nonmembers would not be very strong. More interestingly, if the East Asian countries cooperate with Pacific Basin countries to form an APEC-level RTA, such as a free trade area of the Asia-Pacific, the extension of the regional trade bloc might be considered a more desirable policy option than the proposed East Asian RTAs for East Asian economies, even though countries excluded from the free trade area of the Asia Pacific are worse off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By measuring retail store density with regard to population, several studies have indicated that marketing channels in Asia are different from those in the USA and European countries. The present paper investigates to what extent a model similar to Flath and Nariu (1996) can empirically predict retail densities in Japan and China. The results suggest that the secular decline in the number of retail stores in Japan primarily results from the proliferation of car ownership and the expansion in the average size of a dwelling. We also demonstrate that the model accounts for the large variations in China's retail density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been considerable interest in the relationship between a country's export competitiveness and the role played by technology in strengthening and maintaining competitive advantage. A central feature of recent empirical work, mainly focused on the OECD countries, has rested on examining patterns of export and technological specialization between economies and sectors. This paper moves attention away from the advanced industrialized economies to examine the trends for trade and technological specialization among the East Asian developing economies. In particular, two aspects of specialization are examined: First, to what ex- tent have patterns of competitive advantage changed over time and second, to measure the relation- ship between patterns of trade and technological specialization. Important differences are found in the patterns of specialization, and in the relationship between them among the advanced East Asian economies and those catching up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adapts the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model of the world economy to compare the effects on developed country factor markets of continued growth in East Asia with those of technical change which is labor saving. Trend toward reduced border distortions; Erection of bilateral distortions against East Asian exporters.

This study is the first attempt to investigate the patterns of imports and exports between the Russian Federation and East/Southeast Asian economies, namely, the People's Republic of China; Hong Kong, China; Macau, China; Japan; the Republic of Korea; Mongolia; Cambodia; Lao People's Democratic Republic; Brunei; Indonesia; Malaysia; Myanmar; the Philippines; Singapore; Thailand; and Vietnam. To this end, a panel gravity trade model with series from 2001 to 2017 is provided to estimate the gravity variables in our models. The results reveal that GDP and income are more important in the export pattern from the Russian Federation to the East Asian region, meaning that the economic size and the income of the population in East Asian economies are more important in this pattern than other variables. Moreover, Russia's export pattern with the East Asian region follows the Heckscher–Ohlin hypothesis, while Russia's import pattern with this region is in line with the Linder hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic reform in China has attracted growing attention from around the world owing to its significance for theory and practice. What has been largely missing in the literature is the temporal dimension, i.e., the changes over time in key variables such as organizational environment, firm strategic adaptations, and the performance implications. In this study, we investigate environment and strategic adaptations 12 years after Tan and Litschert examined these issues in 1990. Following a staged model, the study found that (1) organizational environment and firm strategic adaptations have co-evolved over time, (2) a new configuration has emerged and is related to improved performance, and (3) such a relationship is moderated by the stage during transition in which firms were founded. Specifically, firms founded since 1990 are more proactive and innovative than firms that had existed in the previous stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade patterns in East Asia are termed the "Factory Asia" model, whereby Asia functions as a "global factory" that imports intermediate goods from its regional networks and then assembles and exports them as finished goods to higher-income developed countries. In 2001, China's accession into the World Trade Organisation consolidated this pattern by becoming the core economy in this model. However, is this pattern still valid after more than a decade of rapid development in East Asian countries? The main objective of this article is to examine the evolution of this pattern of trade in East Asian countries. Although the key findings of this study show that the Factory Asia model continues, it is changing as different East Asian countries capture more value in global value chains. The gaps in the rate of upgrading are identified and mainly attributed to differences in government policies and competition. However, the dependence on foreign inputs still remains an important part of high-technology production in East Asian countries. Hence, the idea that East Asia is evolving from a "factory" into a "Research & Development hub" remains far-fetched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid-nineteenth century, Karl Marx issued several critiques of political economy writings stressing the exclusive duality of states and the national economies. He argued that capitalism had characteristic features quite apart from those shaped by the idiosyncrasies of national economies. In the first part of this article, we critique the contemporary state-centered explanations for the industrialization of East Asia on same grounds. We claim that most political economists misinterpret or entirely ignore the significance of export-led industrialization, which is a characteristic feature of East Asian capitalism. In the second part of the article, we demonstrate the importance of the retail revolution in the US and Europe on Asian industrialization. In particular, we show that the development of the sequential ordering system that is an inherent feature of Western-based contract manufacturing differentially shaped the industrial organization of East Asian economies. The resulting path-dependent trajectories of development, in turn, encouraged government policy-makers to ‘buy into’ trends of global capitalism in different ways. The trajectories also led business people to privilege and adapt some social institutions and cultural patterns over other ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1980s, developing countries have generally welcomed FDI, recognizing its manifold benefits, such as provision of capital, transfer of technology, etc. An extensive literature has evolved on FDI that identifies a number of variables, such as market size, trade openness, etc, as its key determinants. Domestic investment climate as a determinant of FDI has been excluded from the literature as reliable data on investment climate are generally unavailable. This study seeks to fill that void by using the economic freedom index, published since 1995 by The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal, as a proxy for domestic investment climate for a sample of seven East Asian countries over the 1995-2000 period. Employing panel regression methodologies, this study finds that economic freedom is a significant and robust determinant of FDI. These results further our knowledge of the FDI dynamics in East Asia, which should be helpful in devising strategies to attract more FDI into that region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the relationship between trade and capital flows in East Asia. Influence of trade links on Australian and Japanese aid flows; Macroeconomic impact of aid; Evidence showing that existing trade ties influence donor decisions on where to allocate aid; Implications for donor-recipient relations in Asia.

Focuses on economic growth and the changing structure of trade and production in the Pacific Rim. Use of a framework taken from the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP); Importance of supply-side forces in understanding prospects for future trade patterns; Increase of agricultural exports to East Asia.

Weber's thesis of the incompatibility of the Confucian ethos and rational entrepreneurial capitalism has been challenged by the "economic miracles" of many East Asian countries. One thesis presented here is that Confucianism is compatible with and has facilitated Asian capitalism by its influence on managerial values and practices. According to Weber, the release of tensions created by Calvinism was an important motivating force in the development of capitalism in the Occident. Confucianism offers a parallel mechanism to the, profit-seeking drive in Western capitalism. We show that, in Confucian societies, there also exists tensions - in this case, between ideals and reality. These tensions are released through the Confucian concept of a "ceaseless pursuit of renovation", a motivational mechanism for the development of capitalism in East Asian societies that parallels the West. Weber held that the classic model of bureaucracy, with impersonality at its core, is essential to the development and continuation of capitalism. Our second thesis is that humanism is an important element in Confucian bureaucracy and that humanistic bureaucracy can be both effective and efficient for the development of capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the increase of exports from the United States to East Asia and Latin America. Importance for national and district firms to pay more attention to economic changes in the export markets; Suggestions on the significance of the regions' economic growth to their status as the United States' trading partners; Importance for US-based firms to forecast export demands.

Discusses factors that create favorable prerequisites for the development of the Far East's trade with Japan. Natural resources of the Far East; List of products produced by Far Eastern enterprises that are being exported; Role of Japan in Soviet foreign trade; Details of a trade treaty between the Soviet Union and Japan.