The Asian 'Noodle Bowl': Is it Serious for Business

A lively debate is taking place over the impact of free trade agreements (FTAs) on East Asia's business between those who view the agreements as a harmful Asian noodle bowl - i.e., overlapping regional trade agreements - of trade deals and others who see net beneficial effects in terms of regional liberalization and a building block to multilateral liberalization. A lack of enterprise-level data has made it difficult to resolve the debate. Providing new evidence from surveys of 609 East Asian firms (in Japan, Singapore, Republic of Korea [hereafter Korea], Thailand, and Philippines), this paper seeks to address the critical question of whether the Asian noodle bowl of multiple overlapping FTAs is harmful to business activity, particularly for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The surveys suggest that the Asian noodle bowl does not seem to have severely harmed the region's business activity to date. Use of FTA preferences is higher than expected from previous studies (22% of responding firms). Furthermore, only 27% of responding firms said that multiple rules of origin significantly added to business cost. However, as more currently under negotiation FTAs take effect and the complexity of the Asian noodle bowl increases, the business impact is likely to intensify. Implementation of key policies and closer publicprivate sector cooperation can help mitigate negative effects and facilitate a more SMEinclusive business response to FTAs. Suggestions include: encouraging most favored nation (MFN) liberalization, rationalization of rules of origin, upgrading origin administration, increased awareness of FTA provisions, improving business participation in FTA consultations, and SME support

Constructing and Multilateralizing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership: An Asian Perspective

In May 2013 the ASEAN+6 countries began to negotiate the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The objective of this paper is to analyze the feasibility of constructing such a region-wide agreement and to examine ways to multilateralize it. The paper first reviews free trade agreement (FTA) developments, and discusses the characteristics and motives of FTAs in East Asia. It then analyzes the contents of major plurilateral FTAs in East Asia, that is ASEAN's five FTAs each with the People's Republic of China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, and Australia/New Zealand, which are considered as a base for a region-wide FTA. Finally, the paper examines the feasibility of the RCEP by consolidating the ASEAN+1 FTAs and discusses the possible ways to multilateralize the RCEP

High resolution microscopy study of niobium-sapphire interfaces modified by ion beam mixing

International audienc

Extended investigation on road fatality in Brunei

Road fatality is one of the leading causes of death in Brunei with 79 deaths in 1993, the highest ever recorded. The Brunei government has been trying to reduce this by implementing new traffic measures and successfully reduced fatalities to 24 fatalities in 2014. Yearly road fatality has been fluctuating, but there has been a declining tendency overall. The aim of this study is to investigate road fatality in Brunei by extending the research. We developed a multiple regression model and carried out an analysis on road fatality in Brunei. Our analysis indicates that the road fatality appears to rise depending on the increase in the number of young drivers between 15 to 24 years and the number of unemployed people. Comparisons of Brunei road fatality rate per 10,000 vehicles are made with some other countries and we conclude that Brunei has approximately the same rate as Australia in 2014