International Economic Studies

APEC Study Centre, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand     Abstract:   One of the key sets of questions underlying Asia Pacific economic cooperation over the last decade has been over the nature and form of the regional trade architecture that would gradually emerge from the turmoil of the Asia-Pacific €œnoodle bowl€ of bilateral and plurilateral FTAs, and how that architecture would accommodate the separate impulses of East Asian and trans-Pacific economic integration.   Calls for East Asian economic integration took center-stage in the wake of the East Asian economic crisis of 1997/98, and were quickly reflected in the proposal for an East Asian Free Trade Area (EAFTA) based on the ASEAN plus Three groups. The subsequent development of the so-called €œASEAN Plus One€ FTAs both provided a feasible way forward in the absence of a politically viable basis for integration among the major Northeast Asian economies, and also entrenched the idea of East Asian economic integration as an €œASEAN-centered€ process. Japan€™s proposal for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia (CEPEA), based on an ASEAN plus Six groups of countries that comprised the then membership of the East Asian Summit (EAS), subsequently provided an alternative configuration for a region-wide trade bloc based on East Asia. Since then the EAFTA and CEPEA initiatives have moved forward in parallel, but no agreement has been reached to commence formal negotiations in either case.   This paper has presented the state of play and future outlook for each of the three initiatives as they appeared at the time of the 2010 APEC leaders€™ meeting. This has been followed by a discussion of developments in these initiatives in 2011, as well as possible implications for these initiatives of developments in other arenas. JEL Classification : F15, F19.

In this paper, we address the question that does FDI alone affect economic growth or interaction of FDI and human capital is required to boost economic growth. We develop the model with an expanding variety of products. We estimate the model using some advanced tests utilizing data on FDI flows from developed countries. We find stronger complementary effects between FDI and human capital on the productivity growth rate instead of having them as separate variables. This result is consistent with the idea that the flow of advanced technology brought along by FDI can increase the growth rate of the host economy only by interacting with that country's absorptive capability. JEL Classification: F21: O49

The aim of this paper is to simulate the effects of some macroeconomic policy tools on production and inflation of Iran by the current worldwide financial and real crisis. The theoretical framework of the analysis is based on the so-called €˜IMF/World Bank Integrated Model€™ which is the synthesis (a merger) of the basic monetary approach of the Balance of Payments used at the Fund for designing its adjustment programs, and of the growth Harrodian type model, used at the Bank for its macroeconomic projections for an open economy. This integrated Model has been calibrated for the Iranian case, over the period 1979-2009, and its empirical form has been used for estimating the effects on global output and inflation of three channels of economic policy: restriction in government spending, changes in domestic credit policy as well in exchange rate. The dynamic simulation results, over the period 2006-2009, show that a decrease in government spending is an appropriate policy to reduce the inflationary pressures, even though it has negative effect on economic growth, the domestic credit expansion to private sector creates economic growth considerably higher than an increase in the level of consumer price while devaluation has not had considerable effect on economic growth through exports or imports.       JEL Classification: E00, E21, E22, E50, E51, E52     [1] Corresponding Author, Email: parastoo.shajari@gmail.com

 The main objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of monetary regime (countries with inflation targeting monetary policy versus countries with exchange rate anchor) on the extent of exchange rate pass-through over the period of 1999-2010. To achieve this objective, the econometric model has been estimated by Dynamic Panel Data approach and Arrelano- Bond (AB) method. The empirical findings indicate that the interaction effect of monetary regime with exchange rate has a negative and positive impact on the exchange rate pass-through in first and second groups of countries respectively. However, the cross effect of inflationary environment with nominal effective exchange rate has negative and significant effect on domestic price level in the both groups of countries. Hence, overall, the Taylor hypothesis has been confirmed.JEL Classification: C23:F14:F31

The recent global crisis, as a big crash ( Baldwin and Simon , 2009), has reduced foreign demand growth affecting total countries€™ exports. Given the importance of foreign trade to nations and the reality that recent crisis has affected international trade we study the effects of the global financial crisis on trade relations between countries by using Ma and Cheng (2003) approach and by applying gravity model to both selected developed and developing countries during 1998-2010. Emprical results have approved negative effects of financial crisis on international trade in the countries under consideration. The result obtained is evident that such incidence seems to be significant to explain a sharp fall in the world exports.  JEL Classification : G01, F10

Financial sector is one of the most influential sectors in economic activities. Empirical and theoretical studies conducted in recent years have also confirmed the significant role of financial institutions in economic growth. Additionally, trade and financial liberalization policies have been particular concerned with strategic policies in developed and developing countries. According to dynamic panel data (DPD) and by means of generalized method of moments (GMM) during 1990 to 2008, this study has investigated effects of trade and financial liberalization on financial development of MENA member countries. Empirical results imply that trade liberalization and financial liberalization have influenced separately financial development, while due to inefficiency of financial institutions in providing appropriately financial resources, conducting both liberalization simultaneously has had an unexpected negative effect on the financial development in the region. JEL classification: F19, G29