ASIAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS AND WTO COMPATIBILITY: Goods, Services, Trade Facilitation and Economic Cooperation (World Scientific Studies in International Economics, Band 32) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Shintaro Hamanaka is an Economist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). He also holds the position of Honorary Research Fellow at White Rose East Asia Centre in the United Kingdom (UK). In the Office of Regional Economic Integration of ADB, he is currently responsible for economic and political analysis of regional trade and investment integration in the Asia-Pacific, including FTAs and bilateral investment treaties. He also designs and organizes ADB trade and investment capacity building projects. Before joining ADB, he served as a service negotiator for the Doha Round at the Japanese Mission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva. Prior to this, he was an economist at the Bank of Japan (BOJ), where he was involved in macroeconomic research and policymaking on international financial relations. His research interests include international political economy; global and regional economic governance; political economy of regionalism; regional economic architecture in Asia; and FTAs, particularly regional services agreements. He has authored several books and numerous academic journal articles in the fields of political science, international relations, economics, and international law. He holds a BA from Kyoto University and a PhD from the University of Sheffield.

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It is timely to rethink of the relationship between regionalism and multilateralism in the Asian context, given that we are witnessing the proliferation of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) in Asia. In the 1980s and 1990s, many scholars and policymakers considered that Asian integration was market-based, rather than legal-based and Asian integration would not be legalized. Currently there are many bilateral and plurilateral FTAs in Asia.

This book investigates the appropriate relationship between regionalism and multilateralism with a special reference to recent FTAs in Asia. It is undeniable that the past multilateralism-regionalism debates centered on the trade in goods aspect. However, most FTAs in Asia cover several issues other than trade in goods or tariff liberalization. While GATT XXIV governs regional agreements in trade in goods, there is no or at most a thin agreement that stipulates the relationship between regionalism and multilateralism in areas other than goods. Thus, we should first carefully examine the meaning of "WTO compatible FTAs" in other than goods. The book then specifically asks the following questions: Are Asian regional agreements that cover several issues considered multilateralism-friendly? How does the relationship between regionalism and multilateralism differ between trade in goods and other issues (for example, services, trade facilitation and technical assistance)? What are the best practices that make the regional agreement multilateralism-friendly?