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The essential question this paper seeks to answer is whether the business cycle co-movement in East Asia are fostered by internal bilateral trade within the region, specifically, intra-industry trade or by external forces like the influence of the world’s largest economy, namely, the United States. This paper examines the extent and robustness of the relationship between trade intensity and business cycle synchronization for nine East Asian countries in the period 1965–2008. Unlike previous studies which assume away the region’s concurrent connection with the rest of the world, in our regressions we control for both the US effect and the exchange rate co-movement in the region. We find that the coefficient estimates for intra-industry trade intensity remain robust and significant even after controlling for the US effect and the exchange rate co-movement. The findings confirm that regional intra-industry trade fosters business cycle correlations among countries in East Asia.

This paper investigates the relationship between international trade integration and international financial integration in Asia using a dataset covering the period from 2001 to 2015. Using a simultaneous equations system, this paper sheds further light into international trade integration and international financial integration processes of Asian countries. We account for the bidirectional causality between these two variables by employing a system of simultaneous equations. Utilizing the two-stage least squares estimator, we find a positive and significant bidirectional relationship between international trade integration and international financial integration. This result has strong policy implication relating to the liberalization process in these Asian countries.

This paper aims to examine the trade integration of Yunnan and Guangxi of China with the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) by using the gravity trade model during the 2000s. The strategic purpose is to investigate whether the two Southern border areas of China as a gateway have tended to be integrated with GMS or with the other ASEAN, in other words, whether the hypothesis of Poncet [Poncet, S. 2006. "Economic integration of Yunnan with the Greater Mekong subregion." Asian Economic Journal, 20(3): 303–317] presenting a re-orientation "beyond GMS" of Yunnan trade in 1990s can be applicable to the 2000s' trend in its trade and in Guangxi trade. The main findings were: The trade integration of Yunnan with GMS has exceeded by far above the gravity-model standard in the 2000s, which is different from the Poncet hypothesis; and Guangxi trade has shown a different picture from Yunnan one in that Guangxi trade has exceeded the gravity-model standard for both GMS and the other ASEAN.

This paper investigates the endogeneity hypothesis of optimal currency area (OCA) criterion, that is, business cycles synchronisation, in a panel of Southern African Development Community (SADC) member countries, for the period 1994–2016. Using a Generalised Method of Moments (GMM), the study finds that, amongst other factors, trade induces business cycles comovement. This finding lends support to the endogeneity hypothesis of OCA theory.

This paper studies income inequality and globalization by decomposing economic globalization into trade intensity and financial integration, and also by differentiating the effect of globalization across developed and developing countries. Using panel data on 26 developed countries and 52 developing countries for the 1990–2010 period when globalization was accelerated, this study finds that financial integration affects the income inequality differently from trade intensity and the effect is in contrast across two groups of countries. For example, an increase in trade intensity would widen income inequality in developed countries, but it would reduce the inequality in developing countries. And, a deepening of the financial integration would reduce the income inequality in developed countries but increase the inequality in developing countries. These results suggest that income inequality of developing countries would deteriorate with an imprudent dependence on foreign financing or a rapid opening up of their financial markets to foreign investors, or when faced with more barriers on free international trade.

This paper studies how regional trade among ASEAN-5 countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) help in expanding the member countries’ output. This paper applies ARDL bound testing approach with instrumental variables to explore the relationship and finds that estimates is in range of 0.27–0.55 %. The paper concludes that trade integration should be promoted in order to stimulate economic growth within each country.