Malaysia has shifted its focus from multilateral and regional to bilateral trade agreements due to the current doldrums in the Doha Round and the bandwagon effect from similar shifts in other countries.

Concerns over becoming marginalized in the course of East Asian economic integration are driving a proactive regional trade agreement (RTA) strategy on the part of Taiwan. Three factors explain this concern: Competing visions of economic integration in the region from both the United States and China, the success of Korea in concluding a large number of important RTAs, and the increasing number of overlapping agreements that crowd out countries and economies such as Taiwan that do not have proactive RTA strategies.

Russia is now a member of World Trade Organization (WTO) and of the Eurasian Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Questions remain over how this new global and regional integration will affect the competitive environment of the Russian banking services industry. 

Japanese firms are increasingly involved in various global business operations - not only in traditional international trade in goods, but also in offshore production and the new mode of globalization: offshore outsourcing.

Hardly a week goes by without an African investors’ conference or growth summit. 

This series of policy papers, published by Ifri and the Canon Institute for Global Studies, provides a Japanese perspective on the causes, the mechanisms and the consequences of the global economic crisis, as well as the measures implemented by the States to cope with it.