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The Working Papers Series on Comparative Regional Integration Studies is devoted to the study of regional integration from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. It covers theory, empirical work and policy analysis, and includes contributions on the political, economic, social and cultural aspects of co-operation at the level of both macro-regions and micro-regions. While committed to the highest academic standards, the series aims to be accessible to policy-makers and practitioners and seeks to encourage informed debate on comparative regional integration.
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15.07.06
O-2006/19: Do South-South Trade Agreements Increase Trade? Commodity-Level Evidence from COMESA
By: Ana Maria Mayda and Chad Steinberg
South-South trade agreements are proliferating: Developing countries signed 70 newagreements between 1990 and 2003. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown.In this paper, we focus on the static effects of South-South preferential trade agreementsstemming from changes in trade patterns. Specifically, we estimate the impact of the CommonMarket for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) on Uganda's imports between 1994 and2003. We use detailed import and tariff data at the 6-digit Harmonized System level for morethan 1,000 commodities. Based on a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, we findthat—in contrast to evidence from aggregate statistics—COMESA’s preferential tariffliberalization has not considerably increased Uganda’s trade with member countries, onaverage across sectors. The effect, however, is heterogeneous across sectors. Finally, we findno evidence of trade-diversion effects...
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Countries redistribute substantial amounts of wealth between regions through taxation and social security, even in the absence of an explicit regional policy. Economic theory suggests such redistribution might be distorting. This... By: Damiaan Persyn & Koen Algoed
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Regional disparities have become a hotly debated topic in the last two to three decades. The reason for this increasing interest in regional disparities is twofold: from an applied perspective it should be an issue of political... By: José Villaverde and Adolfo Maza
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The proliferation of regional economic agreements involving East Asian economies in the years since the financial crises is usually explained in the political economy literature by reference to economic factors. These agreements... By: John Ravenhill
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The objective of the paper is double. On the one hand, it seeks to analyse and compare the impact of the Secretariats of Mercosur and the Andean Community on the respective integration processes. In other words, to what extent is... By: Mario J. Filadoro
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This paper takes stock of the literature on the measurement of regional trade integration, showing that traditional indicators, based on bilateral trade intensity indices, are biased by some statistical problems and fail to take... By: Lelio Iapadre and Francesca Tironi
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Increasingly, there are multiple definitions of regions & their development in Africa & the Caribbean. Who so defines: the EU and/or the South? This paper advances a discussion about alternative definitions with reference to the... By: Timothy M. Shaw
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« L’interdépendance entre les hommes donne naissance à un ordre spécifique, ordre plus impérieux et plus contraignant que la volonté et la raison des individus qui y président »
Norbert Elias,
La Dynamique... By: Giovanni Molano Cruz
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The primary focus of corruption studies and anti-corruption activism has been corruption within sovereign states. However, over the last twenty years ‘globalization’, the flow of money, goods, people and ideas across borders, has... By: Charles Sampford
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After three decades of growing 'economic and development cooperation' as well as regular, institutionalized foreign policy consultation between the EU and ASEAN, the two can be regarded as distant but warm friends. ASEAN has... By: Jacques Pelkmans
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From 8-14 September 2006, several intellectuals met in Leuven, Belgium. The group consisted of four Bolivians, four Chileans and four Peruvians, all of whom were invited by the Catholic University of Leuven (ucl) to reflect on a... By: Jorge Magasich
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Globalization is a highly asymmetric and heterogeneous process that could represent benefits for some societies, but, at the same time, severe negative effects for others. This paper carries out an empirical evaluation of the... By: Edgard Moncayo Jiménez
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Frecuentemente se argumenta que el proceso de globalización en curso, particularmente el flujo de comercio exterior, tiene un impacto desestabilizador sobre economías regionales de países en vías de desarrollo.
En este... By: Néstor Garza
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The grouping of countries into a bloc, macro-regions, is a frequently used strategy for countries to increase their political power and enhance the competitive position of their organizations in the context of globalization... By: Lidia Hernández López
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The West and Southern areas of Africa (W&SA) are confronted with enormous challenges to maintain peace and stability, to organise good governance, and to fight against contagious diseases. Reduction of poverty is the prevalent... By: Bob Deacon, Karel Van Hoesteberghe, Philippe De Lombaerde & Cristina Macovei
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The emergence of international fragmentation of production as a contemporary phenomenon of international trade is evident from the rapid expansion of global production sharing and the impressive growth of trade in parts and... By: Lurong Chen
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En 2004 « le trafic illicite de drogues » a été déclaré comme une menace à la sécurité par l’Organisation des Nations Unies. Toutefois, le paradigme de coopération international, adopté en 1988 dans le cadre des... By: Giovanni Molano Cruz
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This chapter aims to provide a set of parameters by which one may assess the quality of governance in systems of regional cooperation or integration.
Some preliminary conceptual clarifications are required since the terms... By: Edward Best
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It is often taken for granted that regional integration processes are progressing and that the regional governance level is indiscriminately gaining importance worldwide, at least from a longer time perspective. However, both... By: Philippe De Lombaerde, Ettore Dorrucci, Gaspare Genna & Francesco Paolo Mongelli
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The South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established in 1985. During these twenty three years, SAARC has prepared a robust intellectual base for regional cooperation and spread awareness amongst more than a... By: Sukh Deo Muni and Rajshree Jetly
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Held in the lead-up to the ASEM 7 Summit, the Conference “Connecting Civil Societies III: An Asia-Europe Dialogue on Economy and Society” (Beijing, 17 and 18 October 2008) has explored how ASEM has promoted civil society...
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Regional integration schemes have proliferated around the world and with them the interaction between regions or interregionalism. The European Union (EU) has been supporting these integration efforts worldwide, putting special... By: Beatriz Véliz Argueta
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This paper analyses the impacts of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries and those of the EU (European Union) in the specific case of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In order... By: Alice Sindzingre
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This study is foreseen in Project I.2 of the Work Programme of the Permanent Secretariat for the year 2008, approved during the XXXIII Regular Meeting of the Latin American Council of SELA.
First of all, this analytical... By: SELA
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The report ‘A Fair Globalisation: Creating Opportunities for All’ of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation claims that regional integration can contribute to a more equitable pattern of globalisation, but... By: UNU-CRIS
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The African continent has witnessed since the nineties a rebirth of regional arrangements
aiming at furthering the integration of Africa. However the process of regional integration has
faced a great variety of obstacles.... By: Emmanuel Fanta
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The connection between labour standards and international trade has become a key issue in therelations between industrialised economies and developing countries. Both the US and the EU areadvocates of the inclusion of “labour... By: Bart Kerremans and Myriam Martins Gistelinck
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The current background paper has been prepared for the High-level Panel “Building productivecapacities for trade competitiveness: Economic Partnership Agreements(EPAs)”, taking place during the 12th Session of the UNIDO... By: Adrian Schöning
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Since the proliferation of regional trade agreements in the late 1980s and early 1990s(the so-called new regionalism wave), preferential rules of origin (RoO) have also proliferated. The discussion on these rules gradually... By: Philippe De Lombaerde and Luis Jorge Garay
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This paper analyses the crisis of decision making in the WTO from the perspective ofcollective action and public goods theory. At the heart of the current policy paralysis isthe inability of WTO members to collectively provide... By: Brigid Gavin
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The WTO’s system of consensus-based decision making has come under increasing stress in recentyears, especially in the wake of high-profile breakdowns in negotiations at the Seattle and Cancunministerial meetings, culminating in... By: Kent Jones
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A crucial factor explains the poor economic performance of Sub-Saharan Africa, i.e. therisky market and trade structure that is entailed by commodity dependence, because ofthe volatility of commodity prices, therefore the... By: Alice Sindzingre
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The World Trade Organization (WTO) has undertaken systemic reforms since its establishmentfollowing the conclusion of the Uruguay Round in 1994. Indeed, the very dynamics of the WTOnegotiating processes have underdone... By: Charles Tsai
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Le présent document analyse les liens entre la culture et la coopération et l’intégration régionalesainsi que leurs répercussions sur la sécurité humaine et le développement. La culture peut être undomaine de coopération... By: Nikki Slocum-Bradley
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This chapter looks at the extent to which monitoring processes and activities provide theintegration in the European Union (EU) with sufficient levels of transparency andaccountability to make it the relatively well-governed,... By: Ana-Cristina Costea, Philippe De Lombaerde, Wouter De Vriendt, Birger Fühne
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In the short run, China’s rise as a major global trade player is already creatingwinners and losers in Latin America and the Caribbean. On the winning side are theeconomies of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), Argentina,... By: Uziel Nogueira
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Regionalist processes are occurring all over the world, not least the formation of micro-regionswhich, although obviously not a new occurrence, are more and more cross-border in nature ratherthan being contained within the... By: Fredrik Söderbaum and Ian Taylor
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The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of what’s been happening since the release of the World Commission’s report that could indicate a trend towards the development of a global framework for the cross-border... By: Frédérique Channac
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The difficult relationship between the two global public goods of cultural plurality andinternational economic integration is often analysed at world level, stressing thejurisdictional overlap between the WTO system and other... By: Silvia Formentini and Lelio Iapadre
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The African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states and the European Union (EU) countries haveagreed to negotiate new WTO-compatible Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that shouldnot be an end in itself, but be first and foremost... By: Sanoussi Bilal and Francesco Rampa
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Studies of Latin American regional integration follow two strands of thought. The first,which I refer to as the ‘classic,’ interprets regionalism as a logical process: a continuumin which economic cooperation would lead to... By: José Caballero
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In this essay I discuss how the international community could conceptualise, understand andreact to global and regional threats. The recent United Nations’ (UN) High-level Panel onThreats, Challenges and Change, and other world... By: Tapio Kanninen
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Much of the debate on regional integration in the European Union (EU) has for a longtime focused on the ‘deepening’ and ‘widening’ of the integration project, and thebalance between these two movements. The process as such was... By: Philippe De Lombaerde et al.
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Over the past five years, there has been a big debate on how to further Asianintegration. Visions and plans have emerged from the East Asian Vision Group (2001),the findings of the East Asian Study Group published in 2002, and... By: Brigid Gavin
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The past two decades have seen the emergence of two paradoxical developments ininternational trade policy making. The multilateral trade system (MTS) has grown andexpanded to include 149 member countries. Most of the new members... By: Brigid Gavin
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In this paper we explore the nature and effects of the Economic Partnership Agreements(EPAs) between the EU and groups of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.We argue that the direct economic effects from reciprocal... By: Karel Van Hoestenberghe and Hein Roelfsema
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