The Catching-Up Process of New Member States of Regional Economic Integration: Empirical Analyses on Intra-Regional Trade and Structural Change at Product-Level

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K03433
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Economic policy
• Research Institution: Wakayama University
• Principal Investigator: Okabe Misa 和歌山大学, 経済学部, 准教授 (20434649)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 後発国のキャッチアップ / ASEAN / 地域経済統合 / 産業構造高度化 / 付加価値貿易

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Regional economic integration has promoted economic growth of member states by facilitating efficient resource allocation and technology transfer in the region, although the disparity in development among members is still an issue to be solved. This study project aims to investigate the catching-up process of new member states of ASEAN by promoting their productivity level through participating the regional production networks and global value chains. As the results, we found that the accession to the regional production networks and inter-process division of labor increases the number and scale of exporter of the new member states. The results also suggest that the regional economic integration in ASEAN provides the opportunities to improve the productivity and to upgrade the export structure of new member states. In addition, based on comparisons with the case of the enlarged EU, we found that the catching-up of new member states of ASEAN has proceeded faster than the case of EU.

Free Research Field

国際経済学