AN OVERVIEW OF REGIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION TO ASEAN ECONOMIC INTEGRATION
Student: Truong Pham Lan Phuong - MDE-16
Introduction
Since the latter of the twentieth century, the world economy has experienced an unprecedented intensification of economic and financial integration in both global and regional scales. Trade and capital account liberalization, as well as technological innovation in transport and telecommunications, have increased the worldwide exchange of factors of production and products. The process of “globalization” has been accompanied by the evolution of economic and financial linkages within regional institutions, which leads the world to become simultaneously more “regionalized” and more “globalized”. A proliferation of regional economic agreements in breadth and depth, particularly in the field of trade, reflects the trend towards regional economic integration in many areas.
Due to the diversity of economies and their histories, regional economic integration follows markedly different patterns across the world. Europe has a long history of regional integration, supported by a strong institutional framework. North America has chosen a free trade area arrangement that does not foresee the creation of supranational institutions. In Latin America, Mercosur’s initial objectives of a common market and co-coordinated economic policies have suffered setbacks caused by financial turbulence in the region in the late 1990s, and the grouping is yet to recover momentum. In ASEAN trade integration has progressed at a rapid pace based on the exploitation intra-regional comparative advantages. Only since the 1997-98 Asian crisis has this market-led process been accompanied by closer inter-governmental coordination, which however, is embracing monetary and financial spheres as well as trade.[1]
My paper aims to:
Firstly, generally understand an overview of regional economic integration by defining the term “regional...