The determinants of east Asian regionalism.

Abstract

East Asia has been experiencing an epic progress of regionalism over the last decade with China, Japan, and Korea (CJK) as the most prominent actors. Regionally speaking, East Asia has been nurtured by a market-driven expansion of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) that leads the bottomup regionalism process. However, this paper argues that the bottom-up process alone is not enough since a more institutionalized approach is needed. From a static panel data simulation, it is found that sound transportation infrastructure, good governance, competitive taxation policies, sizeable markets, good education, democracy and the trend towards industrialization are the main factors that serve as building blocks for East Asian regionalism.

Keywords

• regionalism
• panel data
• East Asia