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New horizons are opening for Africa, with a growing number of Chinese andIndian businesses fostering its integration into advanced markets. However,significant imbalances will have to be addressed on both sides of the equation to support long-term growth.

This research has three main aims: firstly, to empirically analyse the determinants of different levels of integration by re-examining the evidence presented by Baier and Bergstrand ( Journal of International Economics 64(1):29–63, 2004 ) in the JIE 64 (1); secondly, to analyse the importance of additional factors, in particular socio-political factors; and thirdly, to analyse the dynamics of the EU integration process. The results show that although economic and geographical factors are the most important explanatory factors for the probability of regional integration agreement formation or enhancement, socio-political variables also contribute to explain the formation of regional integration agreements. Democracies and countries with a higher level of economic freedom are more likely to form or enhance RIAs.

This volume discusses frameworks for policies that can help offset the polarizing effects that may be generated by the asymmetrical distribution of the costs and benefits of integration into the global economy. Latin America has responded to the challenges of globalization with a renewed interest in regional integration and by transferring more responsibility and resources to local entities. Integration initiatives can be important policy instruments that complement national and subnational policies. However, the distribution of costs and benefits of regional and global integration may be asymmetric. Certain regions or social groups may expand their opportunities, while those that are slower to adapt to the process may face divergent development paths. The absence of policy instruments to compensate for asymmetries may hamper social cohesion and generate a backlash against integration and participation in the global economy. This volume discusses the policy frameworks that could be adopted at the supranational, national and local levels to offset the polarizing effects that may be generated by the process of integration into the global economy.

This work describes why expanding trade and investment is vital for this region. The greatest economic challenge is to create enough jobs for its rapidly growing labor force, which is increasingly young and educated, to ward off threats to social and political stability inherent in high unemployment rates. This effort requires higher, and more sustainable, economic growth than has been achieved in the past two decades. Expanding trade and private investment offers the best hope. The potential is enormous given the region's human resources, skills, location, history, and opportunities. The book analyzes why the region has yet to tap fully into the rich stream of global commerce and investment--and the measures needed to do so, including improvements in the domestic investment climate and reforms in the policies of the region's trading partners. Its findings will appeal to policymakers in the region, the private sector and civil society, trade specialists, donors and partners, and anyone with an interest in the history and prospects of the Middle East and North Africa.

This study reviews the experience of cooperation in selected international river basins and during selected time periods in those basins. The review is from a country perspective and focuses on the countries' perceived risks and opportunities in engaging in regional cooperation deals in response to the prospects for cooperation. It is primarily aimed at external development partners who promote regional public goods (river basin institutions and agreements) and support cooperative activities and investments in international waters. We also believe that countries and individuals engaged in international waters issues will find this study and reflections helpful in enhancing their knowledge and advancing their actions with respect to regional cooperation. The specific purpose of the study is to alert teams engaged in promoting cooperation in international waters to the need for a careful risk analysis and for the formulation of a risk reduction strategy to help countries move toward cooperation.

The Kyrgyz Republic has made major strides in the past decade in its transition to a market-based economy. Its trade and investment policies are arguably the most liberal among the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Despite the generally progressive stance on structural policies and a sound record of macroeconomic management in recent years, economic growth has been modest, living standards are low, a large burden of external debt has accumulated, and integration into global production and trade remains limited. The growth agenda must address more carefully the constraints to greater supply-side response to ongoing reforms—an agenda that can facilitate a broad-based growth of economic activity and exports. Risks to sustainability of current growth rates and continued poverty reduction will otherwise remain high as will the economy’s vulnerability to external shocks. This report is aimed at assisting authorities fashioning this agenda by focusing on three key challenges:Identifying strategic options to strengthen prospects for medium- and long-term growth and poverty reduction; Assessing ways of leveraging domestic trade policy reforms and existing regional and multilateral trade agreements for further regional and global integration; and Identifying key areas where greater efforts are necessary to facilitate improvements in enterprise capability and productivity.

The acquisition of technology and its diffusion foster productivity growth. This title uses cross-country and firm level panel data sets to analyze how specific activities'exporting, importing, FDI, joint ventures'impact on productivity performance.

Regional economic integration stimulates cooperation to uplift socio-economic quality of a region. Although economic integration may, sometimes, result in lesser independence of states, the benefits often outweigh the limitations. Despite encouraging growth in South Asia (pre-Covid-19 period), its contribution in global GDP remains minimal. Trust deficit, reluctance of states, political and security issues, lack of sustaining infrastructure, are some factors affecting gainful integration. Regional economic integration, nevertheless, offers exciting prospects to synergise mutual comparative advantages, trade and commercial gains, investment opportunities in other states. This paper analysis various initiatives within the South Asian region and their impact on regional integration. The pandemic of Covid-19 has worsened socioeconomic predicament and trade transactions in the region. Given the socio-economic and poverty issues, SAARC integration can aid in political stability, socio-economic development thus ensuring overall growth of the region and individual countries.

Regional integration between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan appears to be the most effective integrational process in the post-Soviet area. In the very nearly future the Customs Union can evolve to the Eurasian Economic Union (the EEU)—a structure characterized by the features of common market. Geographical evolution is also taken into consideration. New members of the structure are going to be Armenia and Kyrgyzstan and maybe some other countries. From the point of view of the customs union theory this structure should enhance efficiency in production, increase production levels, improve positions of these countries in international division of labour and improve their level of integration with the world economy. But not all custom unions have been economic success. The particular integrational steps should be driving factors for their economies but sometimes they perpetuate economic backwardness. The EEU can be a formula of cooperation with the European Union. The main aim of this article is an answer to the questions how much economic integration in the framework of the EEU can be complementary to the processes in the EU, and how much it is rather a kind of competition model or even an alternative way of economic relations to the ties linking post-Soviet countries with the EU countries.