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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.

Several financial soundness frameworks, such as CAMELS, are currently present in the banking industry, but some evidence suggests that the present frameworks have inefficiencies in an Islamic banking environment. This study is aimed at identifying and prioritizing the adjusted financial soundness indicators in Iranian banks. In this paper, the factors affecting financial soundness in banking industry were investigated and rated based on the viewpoints of 382 banking experts. Data gathering is done by designing a questionnaire. The research method is descriptive-correlation. For data analysis and the testing of the hypotheses, R-test software and confirmatory factor analysis have been used. TOPSIS method is used to rate the indicators from the points of view of senior banking managers. The findings showed capital adequacy, asset quality, profitability, liquidity, management quality, sensitivity to market risk, Islamic banking, corporate governance, and facilities with technical and economic backing affect the financial soundness of banks, while the liquidity and profitability indexes have the most impact.

Portfolio selection is one of the most important financial and investment issues. Portfolio selection seeks to allocate a predetermined capital (wealth) over one or multiple time periods between assets and stocks in a such way that the wealth of investor (portfolio owner) is maximized the risks are minimized. In the paper, we first propose a mathematical programming model for Portfolio selection to maximize the minimum amount Sharpe ratios of portfolio in all periods (max-min problem). Then, due to the uncertain property of the input parameters of such a problem, a robust possibilistic programming model (based on necessity theory) has been developed, which is capable of adjusting the robust degree of output decisions to the uncertainty of the parameters. The proposed model has been tested on 27 companies active in the Tehran stock market. At the end, the results of the model demonestrate the good performance of the robust possibilistic programming model.

Given the effects of inflation on the decline of household welfare and its impact on production and investment, identifying the factors affecting it in order to adjust inflation and achieve price stability is necessary. Therefore, using the TVP-FAVAR model, which differentiates the fluctuations in factors affecting inflation, we try to identify the effects of different shocks such as liquidity, oil revenues, spot market exchange rates, economic growth, interest rates on bank facilities, budget deficits, inflation uncertainty and unemployment on inflation in Iran. In this study, seasonal data from 1370 to 1394 are used. The results, based on the TVP-FAVAR model, reflect the fact that all variables affecting inflation have a positive effect on this variable. Due to the negative effect of changes in economic growth on inflation rate, especially from 1388 to 1394, the existence of stagflation is confirmed. The shock caused by changes in oil revenues is also an important factor in creating inflation in the economy.