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This paper identifies and discusses the five main areas of environmental management public policy that pose serious challenges to Asian governments. The first is the emerging issue of siting environmentally unfriendly facilities that may be necessary for growth, but with the social and environmental costs borne primarily by local host residents and neighbourhood municipalities, more commonly known as the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. The second issue is the critical need for pricing of non-market environmental goods. Third is the issue of waste generation. The fourth challenge is that of transboundary pollution, which has become increasingly important with regard to its effects on health and foreign relations. Lastly, the paper discusses global warming and climate change. Discussions on cost-benefit analysis and the more novel method of establishing damage schedules are also presented. This is particularly relevant to fundamental differences between developed and less developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the trends in foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into selected South-East Asian and East Asian economies after the Asian crisis. Empirical evidence indicates that South-East and East Asian economies are recovering from the Asian crisis with strong output growth driven largely by export growth. However, output growth in the post-crisis period is also accompanied by rising unemployment rates, growing government deficits, and declining FDI inflows into the South-East Asian region. The declining FDI inflows into South-East Asia after the crisis is of concern, as our empirical results show that FDI is important for output growth in the region. Our results also suggest that there might have been structural changes in the regional economies that could have led to a downward shift in the output growth of Asian economies in the post-crisis period. This raises the issue of the sustainability of their output growth in the post-crisis period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regionalism in Asia, particularly in the form of free-trade areas (FTAs), is a recent trend that is becoming increasingly important. This has been disturbing to many, given the significance of trade and investment in Asian economic growth and development and the region's key role in global commerce. In light of this trend, the goal of this paper is to develop a blueprint, or a set of 10 ‘best practices’, that can be used as a guide to FTAs in order to ensure that they approximate first-best outcomes to the greatest extent possible. Next, the paper applies this framework to the existing FTAs between Asian countries and their regional and extra-regional partners. The results suggest that the more advanced regional accords generally receive high grades, with the notable exception of rules of origin, which tend to be even more problematic in the context of accords in which an OECD country is a party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]