The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: Looking Ahead to the Next Steps

Pressure has been building for the conclusion of the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. Getting the deal done is important, but the TPP is not just another free trade agreement (FTA). It represents the chance to set a trade agenda for the future across a wide range of topics for countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region. This means that the agreement should not be settled in haste. More importantly, it also means that key decisions need to be reached about broader issues related to the institutional structure of the TPP. These decisions must be made now, before the deal is closed, on issues such as how to create the TPP as a living agreement, the formation of a TPP Secretariat, and the clarification of entry conditions for future members such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC). These choices must be made deliberately and carefully even while officials are struggling with reaching closure on the most highly sensitive issues still remaining in the agreement. It will not be easy, but wise decisions are necessary now to ensure the long-term success of the TPP

Trans-pacific partnership : now it gets difficult

A meeting of officials from nine countries in Singapore next week will decide whether the Trans-Pacific Partnership will fly or flounder. Much depends on whether pre-talks rhetoric can be translated into reality

Abenomics' Trade Spillover

There is no escaping Japan's competition in the world markets for goods, particularly in the automotive and electronics industries. Countries exporting to these markets are bound to feel the competitive pressure from a marked fall in the value of the yen. However, while some exporters will be hurt by a cheaper yen, others will benefit from lower input costs, to the extent that they source parts and components from Japan for processing, assembly, and reexport. This paper formalizes these intuitions and tests them against a data set covering more than 90% of world trade at the product level, between 2000 and 2011. Panel regression analysis shows that for countries and products facing Japan's strongest competition, a 10% appreciation of the yen lowers average exports by more than 3%, which is a sizeable pass through. Elsewhere, the impact is negligible, particularly when vertical trade is accounted for

A Systematic Framework to Rapidly Obtain Data on Patients with Cancer and COVID-19:CCC19 Governance, Protocol, and Quality Assurance

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, formal frameworks to collect data about affected patients were lacking. The COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19) was formed to collect granular data on patients with cancer and COVID-19 at scale and as rapidly as possible. CCC19 has grown from five initial institutions to 125 institutions with >400 collaborators. More than 5,000 cases with complete baseline data have been accrued. Future directions include increased electronic health record integration for direct data ingestion, expansion to additional domestic and international sites, more intentional patient involvement, and granular analyses of still-unanswered questions related to cancer subtypes and treatments