Deep Integration, Global Firms, and Technology Spillovers
This book explores the impact of deep regional economic integration on spillovers of knowledge and technology across countries. Deep integration through signing deep regional trade agreements (DRTAs), which cover various policy areas in addition to tariff reductions, may or may not facilitate technology spillovers among their signatories. To understand the mechanism of the impact of deep integration on technology spillovers, this book starts by analyzing the behavior of global firms. Factors that affect global firms’ activities, such as export, foreign direct investment (FDI), offshore outsourcing, are examined. Micro data on Japanese firms are employed for the analysis. Then, the relationships between bilateral trade patterns and technology spillovers and between types of FDI and technology spillovers are investigated in detail.
Cross Regional Trade Agreements : Understanding Permeated Regionalism in East Asia
An unacknowledged key feature of East Asian FTA diplomacy is the region's active cross-regional preferential trading relations. In sharp contrast to the Americas and Europe, where cross-regional initiatives gained strength after the consolidation of regional trade integration, East Asian governments negotiate trade deals with partners outside of their region at an early stage in their FTA policies. The book asks three main questions: Are there regional factors in East Asia encouraging countries to explore cross-regionalism early on? What are the most important criteria behind the cross-regional partner selection? How do cross-regional FTSs (CRTAs) influence their intra-regional trade initiatives? Through detailed country case studies from China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, we show the ways in which these governments seek to leverage their CRTAs in the pursuit of intra-regional trade integration objectives, a process that yields a much more permeated regionalism.

