The East Asian miracle: Economic growth and public policy: By the World Bank. (New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1993. 389 pp. $19.95, paper.)

This book explores whether the world economy is breaking up into regional trading and currency blocs centred on the European Community, Japan and the United States. Frankel uses trade, investment and financial data to assess this issue. He concludes with an analysis of how trends in regional economic integration can be used as building blocks for a stronger multilateral system.

Regional Trading Blocs in the world economic system, reseñado por Antonio Ortiz-Mena L.N.

/pdf/thirty-years-of-current-account-imbalances-current-account-4v0mj32vaz.pdf

Thirty Years of Current Account Imbalances, Current Account Reversals, and Sudden Stops

The surge in free trade agreements (FTAs) in East Asia since the Asian financial crisis has prompted a lively debate on the characteristics, impact, and future path of FTAs in the region. To inform the ongoing debate, this paper maps the salient characteristics of East Asian FTAs using a new FTA database, identifies several key issues to be addressed, and explores economic effects using computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis. The paper suggests that WTO-plus elements need to be further expanded and the negative aspects of FTAs be minimized. The paper argues that consolidation of multiple and overlapping FTAs into a single East Asian FTA can help mitigate the harmful “noodle bowl” effects of different rules of origin (ROOs) and standards and that the consolidation at the ASEAN+6 level would yield the largest gains to East Asia among plausible regional trade arrangements—while the losses to non-members would be relatively small. For such consolidation to occur, ASEAN must act as the regional “hub” by further deepening ASEAN economic integration, the plus-three countries (PRC, Japan, and Korea) need to collaborate more closely, and India needs to pursue further structural reforms. Furthermore, substantial international support is required to strengthen the supply-side capacity of poorer ASEAN countries—including the building of trade-supporting infrastructure (transport, energy, and telecommunications)—so that they can take advantage of integrated regional markets and narrow development gaps within ASEAN. Over time, it would be desirable for East Asia to strengthen economic ties with North America and Europe by connecting an ASEAN+6 FTA with NAFTA and the EU. JEL Classification: F15, F17, O24 ADBI Discussion Paper 77 Masahiro Kawai and Ganeshan Wignaraja

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/53447/1/547236808.pdf

ASEAN+3 or ASEAN+6: Which Way Forward?

As East Asia becomes increasing integrated through market-driven trade and FDI, free trade agreements (FTAs) are proliferating. Consodildation of mutiple and overlapping FTAs into a single East Asian FTA can help mitigate the harmful noodle bowl effects of different or competing tariffs, standards and rules. A region-wide FTA will also encourage participation of low-income countries and reduce trade-related business costs, particularly for small and medium enterprises. A computable general equibrium (CGE) model examines the economic impact of various types of FTAs in East Asia (among ASEAN 1's, ASEAN 3, and ASEAN 6) finding that consolidation at the ASEAN 6 level would yield the largest gains to East Asia among plausible regional trade agreements.

https://aric.adb.org/pdf/workingpaper/WP14_East_Asian_FTA.pdf

Regionalism as an Engine of Multilateralism: A Case for a Single East Asian FTA

Financial contagion and volatility spillover: An exploration into Indian commodity derivative market

Human capital, technological progress and trade: What explains India's long run growth?

Foundation models have taken over natural language processing and image generation domains due to the flexibility of prompting. With the recent introduction of the Segment Anything Model (SAM), this prompt-driven paradigm has entered image segmentation with a hitherto unexplored abundance of capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to conduct an initial evaluation of the out-of-the-box zero-shot capabilities of SAM for medical image segmentation, by evaluating its performance on an abdominal CT organ segmentation task, via point or bounding box based prompting. We show that SAM generalizes well to CT data, making it a potential catalyst for the advancement of semi-automatic segmentation tools for clinicians. We believe that this foundation model, while not reaching state-of-the-art segmentation performance in our investigations, can serve as a highly potent starting point for further adaptations of such models to the intricacies of the medical domain. Keywords: medical image segmentation, SAM, foundation models, zero-shot learning

SAM.MD: Zero-shot medical image segmentation capabilities of the Segment Anything Model

Using firm-level data, this paper investigates whether foreign direct investment and the presence of multinational enterprises explains India's improved export performance during the postreform per...

Foreign Direct Investment, Firm Heterogeneity, and Exports: An Analysis of Indian Manufacturing

In recent years, some efforts have been made to give an identity to the Asian region as a dynamic economic community. Considering the level of endowments existing in different parts of Asia, it is felt that the whole of Asian region is a vibrant economic space in the world economy and a successful RTA can be formed in this part of the region. The consolidation of high growth economies of the region, particularly the formation of the ASEAN-plus-three, has indicated that they can form a meaningful regional cooperation in Asia, and in terms of expected level of intra-regional trade, it could be similar to that of FTAA. In November 2002, the ASEAN Summit had not only made an attempt to reduce gaps between ten plus three (Japan, South Korea and China) countries in Asia, but also allowed India to join in the group as an effective regional partner. 
In recent years, various attempts have been made to expand the level of cooperation between the regional countries. Under the Chiang Mai Initiatives, the ten plus three countries of the region are attempting to forge a monetary cooperation among themselves with a view to expand intra-regional trade. Simultaneously the Plus Three countries of the ASEAN are also attempting to initiate bilateral FTA with number of other ASEAN partners. The most interesting trend in Asia is that in the post-crisis period, more and more vibrant economies of the region are showing interest to create a free trade zone around ASEAN countries.
The present paper argues that there is wastage of energies and resources to go for bilateral FTAs with different pairs of countries, since most of the associated countries in the ASEAN process are having faith in outward-oriented policies. In this context, one can visualize a wider FTA in Asia, comprising some of the vibrant economies of the continent. In this process, Japan can take the lead in shaping the FTA.
For this paper, we will be using CGE model and also applying GTAP trade model for solving the problem. For operational convenience, fifteen regions are identified consisting of some ASEAN countries, Japan, Korea, China, India, a few other important Asian countries and the rest of the world. Depending upon the important tradable sectors in the region, we have identified 26 sectors for the analysis. 
We will be using monopolistic version of the model to analyse the impact of FTA on the regional partners and the global economy as a whole. We are also attempting to decompose the supply of labour in to skilled unskilled ones. We believe that there is some possibility of labour movement in the skill labour category across these countries. We will develop macro closures suitably to accommodate movements of natural persons. 
Besides the paper will highlight on the broad policy initiatives taken by the regional partners, production and trade structure of the regional partners, etc. The study will also examine macro-economic fundamentals of the region to undertake FTA proposal on a fast track.

/pdf/towards-formation-of-close-economic-cooperation-among-asian-2obwudw8lp.pdf

Saikat Sinha Roy

Papers

Financial contagion and volatility spillover: An exploration into Indian commodity derivative market

Human capital, technological progress and trade: What explains India's long run growth?

SAM.MD: Zero-shot medical image segmentation capabilities of the Segment Anything Model

Foreign Direct Investment, Firm Heterogeneity, and Exports: An Analysis of Indian Manufacturing

Towards Formation of Close Economic Cooperation Among Asian Countries