KOKUSAI KEIZAI

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The WTO has been playing an important role in international economic relations.It has brought the security and predictability through its comprehensive agreements and well-refined dispute settlement system.
While the WTO undoubtedly has succeeded in establishing the multilateral trading system, the Third Ministerial Conference in Seattle in 1999 revealed that the WTO now confronts several difficult challenges.The future of the WTO depends on how the WTO, particularly through the New Round launched in 2002, deals with these difficulties.
This paper addresses four among these new issues, including (i) trade and development, including implementation issues such as capacity building of developing countries, (ii) e-commerce, (iii) trade and environment, (iv) trade remedy laws, particularly antidumping.All of the four are targeted in the New Round, though emphasis to be placed varies from issue to issue.We analyze the background and argumentations of each issue, and lay out expected outcomes of the New Round regarding these issues.

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Receltly a new global wave of regional integration prevails in the world economy. Notably EU, NAFTA (FTAA) and a new tide of regional integration in East Asian countries, including Japan, are outstanding.These three areas seem to construct the triadic structure of the world economic system.
Our purpose is to resolve each of the triad into three parts;international standard common to all countries;regional specific factors common to countries which belong to that region;country specific factors. This resolution can illuminate each characteristics of the triad, and promote a better understanding on the interdependency of the triadic structure.
It is discussed that EU and a formation of East Asian FTA have potential powers for avoiding an excessive penetration of Anglo-American-Standard into each region, and that regional specific factors may play an important role as a breakwater for preserving country specific factors.

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The paper firstly analyses the agendas and progress in strengthening the architecture of the International Financial System after the Asian crises, including introduction of prudential regulation, promotion of private involvement, quest of adequate exchange regime, prevention of financial crisis etc.Secondly the paper discusses the function focusing of the two Breton Woods institutions.IMF would restructure its role to play in macro-economic surveillance and lend in the short span, and the World Bank would take initiative in poverty alleviation and development.Thirdly the paper reviews the recent increase in number and scope of structural conditionality in IMF-supported programs and proposes the radical change from the viewpoint of ownership and participation.

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From our experiences of some large currency crises in 1990's, we are rebuilding an international financial architecture that will prevent any currency crises.This paper focuses on international currencies and exchange rate regimes to consider a crisis-proof international financial architecture.At first, “two corner solutions”and an intermediate exchange rate system are compared with each other for a crisis-proof exchange rate system.Next, although a lesson of the Asian currency crisis tells us that a de facto dollar peg was dangerous for East Asian countries, it points out stronger linkage of East Asian currencies with the US dollar in recent years. Both inertia in a position of the US dollar as a key currency and a coordination failure in choosing exchange rate system are regarded as its causes.The latter suggests that it is necessary to make international coordination in choosing an optimal exchange rate regime and, in the long run, international monetary union in East Asia.

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