Regional economic arrangements such as free trade areas (FTAs), customs unions, and currency blocs, have become increasingly prevalent in the world economy. Both pervasive and controversial, regionalization has some economists optimistic about the opportunities it creates and others fearful that it may corrupt fragile efforts to encourage global free trade. Including both empirical and theoretical studies, this volume addresses several important questions: Why do countries adopt FTAs and other regional trading arrangements? To what extent have existing regional arrangements actually affected patterns of trade? What are the welfare effects of such arrangements? Several chapters explore the economic effects of regional arrangements on patterns of trade, either on price differentials or via the gravity model on bilateral trade flows. In addition, this book examines the theoretical foundation of the gravity model. Making extensive use of the gravity model of bilateral trade, several chapters explore the economic effects of regional arrangements. In addition, this book examines the theoretical foundation of the gravity model.

In January 1992, the leaders of ASEAN gathered for their fourth summit meeting to sign an agreement called the Common Effective Preferential Tariff for the creation of the ASEAN Free Trade Area. The significance of this step arose notably from the fact that it formally marked the shift of the ASEAN economic enterprise from one of economic cooperation to one towards economic integration. Among the spurs that goaded ASEAN to undertake the shift was the rise of economic regionalism in several other parts of the world. One of those regions was the southern cone of Latin America, where the Treaty of Asuncin had been signed in 1991 to create the Mercado Comn del Sur (MERCOSUR), or Common Market of the South. Recently, ASEAN has sought political and economic linkages not only with Latin America as a whole through the Rio Group at the United Nations or through the Forum for East Asian and Latin Americal Cooperation (FEALAC), but also, more narrowly and directly, with MERCOSUR. At their July 2008 meeting, the ASEAN foreign ministers announced the decision to hold the inaugural ASEAN-MERCOSUR Ministerial Meeting in Brasilia on 24 November 2008. It is in this light that the ASEAN Studies Centre of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore requested the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and Dr Pang Eul-Soo and Dr Laura Jarnagin, professors in Colorado School of Mines in the United States, to do two separate studies from two different viewpoints on the experience of MERCOSUR and on the lessons that experience may hold for ASEAN.