Managing the Noodle Bowl: The Fragility of East Asian Regionalism

Richard Baldwin

No 5561, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: The paper argues that East Asian regionalism is fragile since (i) each nation's industrial competitiveness depends on the smooth functioning of 'Factory Asia' - in particular on intra-regional trade; (ii) the unilateral tariff-cutting that created 'Factory Asia' is not subject to WTO discipline (bindings); (iii) there is no 'top-level management' to substitute for WTO discipline, i.e. to ensure that bilateral trade tensions - tensions that are inevitable in East Asia - do not spillover into region-wide problems due to lack of cooperation and communication. This paper argues that the window of opportunity for East Asian 'vision' was missed; what East Asia needs now is 'management' not vision. East Asia should launch a 'New East Asian Regional Management Effort' with a reinforced ASEAN+3 being the most likely candidate for the job. The first priority should be to bind the region's unilateral tariff cuts in the WTO.

Keywords: Regionalism; East asia; Noodle bowl; Management not vision (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F13 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (83)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP5561 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: MANAGING THE NOODLE BOWL: THE FRAGILITY OF EAST ASIAN REGIONALISM (2008)
Working Paper: Managing the Noodle Bowl: The Fragility of East Asian Regionalism (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5561

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP5561

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().