Vinod K. Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo
Oxford University Press, 2014
The historical lament that Asia lacks trade institutions has in recent years been replaced by arguments that there are too many regional institutional forums addressing trade. Yet despite—or possibly because of—this proliferation of accords, the bulk of Asian regional institutions remain relatively informal and their underlying legal rules—with exceptions such as ASEAN—tend to be soft.
This chapter focuses on how we can account for variations in the formality of trade institutional outcomes. Second, it reviews the likely future trajectory of different trade arrangements in the region and how they may be reconciled with one another.