We watch the news about the US–China trade war every single day recently. At the present, Asian economy grows with the international division of commodities, service industry, investment and labor in a specific region. The division indeed promotes the economic growth of Asian countries.

In this journal, I retrospect the exact reason why the US launched the Section 301 investigation against Japan, imposed trade sanctions on Japan, and made the large appreciation of the yen. Furthermore, I probe into China’s problems caused by becoming a leading economic superpower rapidly after its reform and opening to analyze China’s actual economic capacity. Then I discuss how the US and China actually scramble for the control over the industries in the US-China trade war, how the US–China trade war influences the economics for both the US and China, and how the trade policies affect the transformation of the international division in Asia.

Moreover, I present the contradiction and problems caused by the conflicts between China’s socialism and free trade. In the international arena of WTO, China, with rapid economic growth, should actively improve domestic economic regime and the policies for both foreign trade and inward investment. Lastly, I explore how the supply chain influences the Asian countries that are connected with trade inseparably, and I therefore conclude that all the related countries should build the new order of economics and trade for both the US and Asia through the multilateral negotiation and the principles to create more benefits for all members.

East Asian industrialization and economic development are characterized by a pattern called the flying geese paradigm, whereby one economy takes a lead in industrialization and other economies in the region follows the leader (Akamatsu, 1962). In this paper, we postulate that this typical pattern of industrialization could also be explained by a more recent narration based on the product space, advanced by Hidalgo and Hausmann (2009). Japan, as a lead goose, is at the technological frontier in the region and consistently ranks first in the Hidalgo-Hausmann economic complexity index. This is followed by subsequent shifts in the production structure and export basket of other economies in the region over the years. The individual economy product space suggests that these economies successfully followed their succeeding leader and moved their production base to the core. The export basket for these economies varied from natural resources in the earlier years to textiles and footwear in later periods and finally to electronics and automobiles. China’s product space is an exemplary case on successful diversification of products and industrialization.

Market-led regional integration in Asia is moving fast, despite the slow progress in establishing an effective Asia-wide regional integration institution. However, how South Asian economies are integrating into the Asian economy remains unclear. Using trade statistics from the Asian Development Bank’s regional integration database, this paper investigates the situation and determinants of trade integration of South Asia into Asia. While the trade volume from South Asia to broader Asia rose sharply from US $18.12 billion in 1990 to US $381.84 billion in 2017, the trade share (of total trade) rose from 27.35% to 40.1% during the same period. However, the regional trade intensity index (TII) of South Asia to Asia declined from 1.27% in 1990 to 1.16% in 2017, indicating the declining importance of Asia vis-à-vis the outside world for South Asia. Using the dynamic panel data approach on the cross-country panel data of five South Asian countries for the period 1990–2017, this study also explores the determinants of South Asian trade volumes and share into Asia. The results indicate that the past record of the dependent variables and the aid flows from Asian bilateral donors significantly increased both trade volume and share. Other positive determinants of trade volume are the economy size, trade openness, FDI inflows and ICT access. While the number of FTAs is a positive determinant, a country’s level of economic development, size of economy and FDI inflows are the negative determinants of trade share. The military expenditure is a negative determinant for both trade volume and share. The finding suggests that more FTA participations and foreign aids from within the region should be promoted, and militarization should be minimized to accelerate the economic integration of South Asia into Asia.

Ever since the end of Cold War, the US administration has selected the trade policies that place importance on “engagement” rather than “containment” in terms of economic relations toward China, while having a number of problems with China. However, the Trump Administration sees China as growing threats to the US, as a result, it shifted policy from “engagement” to containment”. In particular, the US–China trade friction was escalated following the announcement of the launch of sanctions against China under Article 301 of the U.S. Trade Law on March 2018, which approves imposing tariffs on Chinese products. Based on the policy making process of trade policy in the US, this paper try to analyze about how has the US trade policy changed and what was the factor for explaining this change. This article concluded the actors involved in the policy making processes has had a major impact on the shift of trade policy toward China.

Who cares about China and Chinese issues? To answer this question, this article analyzes the “Web of Science^TM” academic database of THOMSON REUTERS. The main results are as below.

Inside China, research on “China” and “Chinese” issues is written by researchers and scholars who work for government-affiliated think tank institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and well-known universities such as Peking University. It has become clear that more research is being conducted in the field of natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, geology, biology, and genetics than in social sciences such as business management and economics. The funding sources for both fields are largely in the various national science promotion funds such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program). In addition, looking at the affiliations of the co-authors, we found that a lot of international joint research is being promoted, in particular, by promoting international joint research with developed countries, it can be seen that the quality of research in China has also been improved through publication in many international journals.

Outside of China, “China” research is also of great interest, and each region has its own characteristics. In the US, it is as part of regional studies or Asian studies. On the other hand, it is being conducted more in the field of natural sciences such as the environment rather than social studies such as regional studies or political history in Japan. For authorship, the articles have been written by scholars and researchers working at famous universities or research institutions in each region/country, and the great contribution of quality overseas Chinese researchers who are fluent in Chinese and familiar with China. What is interesting is that there is less share of international joint research between the United States and China in the US.

In recent years, a protective flow occurred in the world trade system. The United States imposed additional tariff measures on the EU, Canada, Mexico and other countries, reviewed NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and then had sanctions including additional tariffs on China’s infringement of intellectual property rights. China took countermeasures against the US, including additional tariffs. In addition, negotiations between UK and EU are following in terms of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU (Brexit), and difficulties in UK’s internal procedures. On the other hand, WTO does not function, and each country has concluded its own FTAs (Free Trade Agreements), and international rules are becoming absent. Under such circumstances, Japan should play a major role to maintain the world free trade system.

In this paper, I would examine the future development of Japan’s trade policy and FTA policy after organizing the FTA movements that have progressed in the world and Japan. Japan should play a leading role in “Promotion of Mega FTA” and “WTO Reform” to deter the spread of protectionist movements and maintain the world free trade system.

Although ASEAN 5 economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) have undergone through a remarkable achievement in the past regarding manufacturing export, they have not been able to successfully upgrade the level of their manufacturing export recently. Meanwhile, manufacturing export and manufacturing sector as a whole still plays a major role for ASEAN 5, and it requires support from another essential sector, which is the financial sector. The current development of the financial sector in ASEAN 5 economies are rapid and possess a massive potential to be unleashed in the future. Therefore, through financial deepening, or an increase in depth of the financial sector through diversification of financial capital allocation, it is expected that productive sector within the economy could develop further in the future ahead. By using fixed effects regression method and using financial deepening from the banking sector, stock market, and bond market as parameters for financial deepening during the period of 2001–2017 for ASEAN 5 economies, analysis regarding the impact of financial deepening to manufacturing export can be conducted. Based on the research, it is discovered that financial deepening from the banking sector and bond market have successfully generated positive and significant impact to manufacturing export, but not for the stock market. Hence, analyzing implications related to results of this research should be delivered, which cover implications for academic, policies, and business. Furthermore, key implication analysis delivered in this research mainly focus on maintaining balance between financial sector and real sector, especially in terms of aspects that related to manufacturing export.

Just a couple of years before, some countries including in Southeast Asia, are more interested in the mega regionalism such as the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the FTAAP (Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific) and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). From now on, in addition to the mega-regionalism, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members are also the enthusiast with the bilateral. Time-wise, the bilateral negotiation is faster than that of the regional or mega-regional, yet in term of risk, it is riskier since a country has to do head to head negotiation with its partner. Macroeconomic indicators affect negotiation results. A previous study on Indonesia proved that income per capita gap affected the bilateral output gap. If the partner has income per capita higher than that of Indonesia, then Indonesia has to aim for the investment inflows (FDI), and trade if the opposite. Now, this study attempts to prove it with more macroeconomic variables and observed countries. This study adopted 15 macroeconomic variables with eight observed countries of the RCEP (Japan, South Korea, China, India, Australia, and New Zealand) and two existing Indonesia’ bilateral economic partners (Pakistan and Chile) from 1987–2017. It applied the econometric model and took a significant result for weighting the index. The latter has been formulated utilizing the comparative macroeconomic variables between Indonesia and her partner. Parameter one applies for insignificant, and two applies for the significant variable. The indexes are then combined as one composite index and decompose with an association to either trade or investment issue. This study finds (1) investment issues are more dominant than trade issues in Indonesia bilateral negotiation, and (2) the better macroeconomic indicators of the partner, the more advantage from investment inflow and the opposite, the more advantage for trade.

Ending hunger in South Asia (SA) is significant from a Zero Hunger perspective because, SA is home to nearly one-fourth of the world’s population. This study takes into consideration a number of parameters to understand hunger and malnutrition in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Hunger is analyzed by SDG2.1 and Global Hunger Index (GHI); malnutrition is analyzed by SDG2.2, GHI and World Health Organization (WHO) classification. In Southern Asia the Prevalence of Undernutrition has been steadily decreasing for every country during 2004–06 to 2016–18 and reached nearly 15 percent from more than 21 percent. Except Bhutan and Sri Lanka, every other country in South Asia shows significant reduction in the percentage share of children moderately or severely stunted. Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan has proportion of children moderately or severely wasted below 10 percent, India has nearly 21 percent, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have nearly 15 percent of children moderately or severely wasted. In South Asia, there has been a dramatic rise in the numbers of children under 5 years of age who are overweight along with increase in the percentage of obese in adult population during 2012 and 2018. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan suffer from a serious level of hunger and Sri Lanka has moderate hunger according to Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2018. Therefore, it is observed that throughout South Asia hidden hunger prevails and countries face multiple burden of malnutrition along with moderate food security. Access as well as affordability of balanced, nutritious and diverse diets is thus important for South Asian nations. However, in South Asia overall trends in hunger and undernutrition are improving which shows signs of hope while achieving an acceleration in the reduction of hunger and achieving SDG 2 in this region remains a big challenge.

East Asian regional integration has played a significant role in East Asia’s economic development and financial stability over the past several decades. However, the ongoing escalation of de-globalization and unilateralism around the world not only seriously challenged the consensus on globalization and multilateralism, but also complicated the process of East Asian regional integration. To further deepening regional integration, we argue that East Asian countries should continue to improve regional economic integration through FTAs as well as strengthen financial integration through East Asian financial safety net establishment. In the meanwhile, reinforcing regional currency cooperation is becoming increasingly important for East Asian countries to maintain intra-regional exchange rate stability. To achieve above goals, East Asian countries need to enhance regional institution building and architectural design. What’s more, East Asian countries should promote integration of their national strategies into regional long-term goal of establishing an East Asian Community (EAC). Last but not least, enhancing cooperation between the regional powers, particularly China and Japan, is crucial for further deepening East Asian regional integration. It should be noted that East Asian countries also should coordinate with other areas to seek shared interests and common understandings on globalization and multilateralism. How to create a win-win outcome over the long run truly contests East Asian leaders’ political intelligence.

Currently, cryptocurrency is at the frontier of financial development and its role and impact on the economy is highly debated among policymakers. Research on cryptocurrency in the field of economics primarily focus on examining determinants of cryptocurrency prices, cryptocurrency exchange rates, among others. So far, there are no studies specifically investigating the how economic and institutional factors influence the policy stance on cryptocurrency. This study aims to contribute to literature by bringing together two strands of literature–one examining cryptocurrency regulation and the other investigating financial development through institutional quality and financial openness. We compose an index of de jure openness to cryptocurrency in 218 countries, using current legal and regulatory status of cryptocurrency compiled in 2018. Then, we investigate potential institutional and macroeconomic factors which can affect cryptocurrency regulation using cross-sectional ordered probit model. Our results show effective governance institution is associated with a less restrictive regulatory stance on cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, financial openness is not found to be significant. Our results are robust to alternate specifications.

This paper investigated trade integration and its impact upon the correlations of business cycles in East Asia. The intra-industry trade shares in total trade changed in the past. Data showed that intra-industry trade has been increasing over the last two decades but the growth of the intra-industry trade shares in total trade slowed down entering into the 21st century. The intra-industry trade played a role in stabilizing bilateral trade flows during the economic turmoil times of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis. Empirical evidence showed that increased intra-industry trade had a positive impact upon the correlations of business cycles among regional economies. The recent global financial crisis had a distortive effect upon the connective relationship between intra-industry trade and the correlations of business cycles.

East Asia and Southeast Asia have been maintaining rapid growth since the 1980s owing to the R&D spillovers brought about by the inter-process division of labor as a consequence of regional economic integrations. This article, based on the framework of Nishioka and Ripoll (2012), conducted an empirical analysis on the relationship between the R&D content of trade in intermediate goods and productivity at the industry level. The results indicated that the estimated value of the coefficient for the R&D content from the developed countries was significantly positive, confirming that the R&D spillovers through the inter-process division of labor had led to an increase in industry-level TFP. The R&D spillovers were particularly noticeable in industries such as machinery, that saw active R&D activities in the developed countries. The analysis results remained unchanged, although the R&D activities in the East Asia and Southeast Asia were added as an explainable variable. For NIEs, the estimated value of the added variable’s coefficient was significantly positive while the estimated value for the R&D content from the developed countires was NOT. This suggests that the effects of the R&D spillovers from the developed countries were not uniform, but were influenced by factors such as their income levels.

The 1997 Asian financial crisis has convinced East Asian governments the urgency to develop regional bond markets. Later in 2003, the Asian Bond Markets Initiative (ABMI) was introduced, which was thought as the milestone for the local currency (LCY) bond market development in East Asia. This paper aims to investigate the current state of each East Asian LCY bond market from four dimensions: bond market size, access, efficiency and stability. The East Asian LCY bond markets have experienced substantial expansion in terms of absolute amount of bonds outstanding since 2003. Market access is also improved, as shown by the decreasing capital costs through bond markets and rising new bond issuance volume every year. The bond markets are more resilient with larger amount of long-term maturity bonds. However, there are still challenges ahead. The East Asian bond markets remain illiquid with wide bid-ask spreads and low turnover rate. “Buy-and-hold” investors make up a large share of market participants in the LCY bond markets. Compared with government bond markets, East Asian corporate bond markets are less developed, except for Malaysia, Korea and Singapore. In sum, East Asian LCY bond markets are still far from complete, more needs to be done.

This paper investigates the impact of the bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) as being observed in firms’ FDI location choice decisions. Theoretically the BITs effect may well manifest itself, nevertheless it empirically remains ambiguous. The other vital limitation of literatures should be obviously revealed by the limited empirical research on OFDI of emerging market countries (EMCs). In this study, we propose the following features to the BITs-FDI literature: (i) using firm-level data to focus on EMCs and explore the factors including BITs that determine EMCs’ OFDI; (ii) a discrete choice model implemented by mixed logit to capture discrete investment decisions. With these features, we have performed an empirical analysis using firm-level data on the location choice of EMCs’ OFDI over 2003–2015. Our empirical analysis results show that BITs significantly promote the OFDI of EMCs, is robust to applying different BITs variables and using different econometric models. Meanwhile we have found that, existing BITs involved in EMCs have a significant substitutive effect on the institutional environment of host countries, consistent with literatures of developed countries.

This article analyses the effects of microcredit on child-schooling investment expenditure via formal and informal sectors by using data from the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey conducted in 2014. The analysis is carried out with an econometric approach that combines the endogenous treatment effect model and the bivariate discrete choice model to control for endogenous selection bias resulting from unobserved factors that potentially affect both/either households’ uptake of formal and/or informal microcredit and household spending on child-schooling investment. The findings suggest that the uptake of formal microcredit is very likely to reduce child-schooling investment expenditure.

This paper analyzes the impact of financial access on export participation for the case of Indonesian manufactures. In self-selection hypothesis, export participation is explained by heterogeneity in productivity. By entering export market, firms are burdened with high cost which force them to be more productive and efficient. Therefore, this paper aims at observing whether firm’s access to external finance can increase firm’s chances to participate in export. Furthermore, this study also analyses the impact of firm’s financial access on export participation through productivity and firm size. This study uses firm-level dataset from Indonesian manufacturing survey dataset. Probit analysis for panel dataset is applied in this study. The result shows that firms with access to external borrowing have higher probability to enter export market. This paper also highlights the importance of firms’ productivity and firm size as channels through which financial access explains firms’ participation in export.

Happiness is now very important as a policy tool. Takahashi (2018a) discussed “ideal happiness” based on Plato’s theory of “Ideas.” He showed that it could be used as a deflator of happiness like a GDP deflator to measure real happiness. However, he took data only from qualitative surveys with a small sample size. Therefore, we need more evidence from large-sample surveys. In this article, using five data sets from four countries, I re-examined what the most important criterion is to evaluate happiness and how ideal happiness has an effect on present happiness.

The findings showed that most people, in particular younger and middle-aged populations, rated their own happiness by comparing it with their ideal conditions of happiness. Moreover, many believed that it was very difficult to feel only happiness over the course of our whole life or that we need unhappy moments sometimes to understand the meaning of happiness. From the structural equation model (SEM), these opinions led to a lower ideal happiness. These persons tend to indicate lower levels of happiness. Therefore, the evidence made clear that the more that citizens believe that it is difficult to achieve only happiness in their lives or that unhappiness is meaningful for their lives, the lower the average level of happiness is in that country. We need to continue research in this field.

Since the 1980s, international specialization has emerged around the world. In particular, international specialization in East Asia is more advanced than in other regions. Many previous studies indicate that the East Asian production network is behind this international specialization and that Japanese multinational enterprises (MNEs) have played a significant role in the formation of the East Asian production network. However, few studies have analyzed the location determinants of Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) from the perspective of East Asian production networks. Therefore, this paper investigates and analyzes the machinery industry, which is the core industry of the East Asian production network, and East Asian countries as investment destinations. In addition, since the 2000s, Newly industrializing economies (NIEs)’ exports of intermediate goods have increased significantly along with an increase in NIEs’ intra-regional FDI. In particular, South Korean MNEs in electrical machinery and transport machinery are actively expanding overseas, contributing to the expansion of the production network in the region. However, few studies have analyzed the location determinants of the FDI of Korean MNEs. This study analyzes the location determinants of the FDI of Japanese MNEs and Korean MNEs and clarifies the characteristics of direct investment of both countries and the formation of the East Asian production network.

The findings of this analysis show that the FDI of Japanese MNEs is “efficiency-seeking FDI,” in which the market size and wages are negative and statistically significant. Meanwhile, the FDI of Korean MNEs is “market-seeking FDI,” in which wages are not statistically significant, and the market size is positive and statistically significant. Furthermore, as a result of adding policy factors to the specification to draw suggestions for developing countries, the coefficients of bilateral investment treaty (BIT) and free trade agreement (FTA) are positive and statistically significant, and their odds ratios are higher than other variables. This result shows that government policy is the most important factor in attracting foreign capital.