ISAS Working Papers

Asia has experienced an explosion of regional trade agreements (RTAs) in recent years particularly in East and Southeast Asia. Production and institutions across these regions have become further integrated due to these RTAs. The domain of integration now extends to South Asia with India and other South Asian economies getting connected to East and Southeast Asia through formal trade arrangements. Proliferation of RTAs has revived the debate on multilateralism and regionalism. While most regional economies figure in the multilateral framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO), their pursuit of RTAs has raised questions over whether they repose greater faith in regional trade networks. The Economics and Trade Policy research cluster at ISAS organised a workshop at Singapore on 20 October 2010 on „Trade Policies in South Asia and Southeast Asia: Encouraging Regionalism?‟ that examined different aspects of the theme including comparative dimensions of trade frameworks, bilateral trade relations and country perspectives on regional trade. The papers are being brought out by ISAS as a working paper series. This paper is the second in this series