East Asian Economic Integration and its Impact on Future Growth

摘要

Countries can attempt to 'walk and chew gum' at the same time. The question is whether they would want to. For reform-weary governments, PTAs are the best excuse they have had in years to avoid doing the things that really matter. For reform-ready governments with limited regulatory reform capacity, PTAs are a distraction from the main game. If the empirical analysis of this paper can be generalised, it suggests that by far the greatest real income gains to the East Asian region would come from comprehensive reform of the non-discriminatory impediments to competition, as part of a thorough-going programme of unilateral domestic regulatory reform.