Regionalization of Trade in the Asia-Pacific: A Statistical Approach

Despite the integration of the East and Southeast Asian economies into the world economy there is a clear trend towards regionalization of foreign trade in Asia-Pacific. A method that used hierarchical cluster analysis and bilateral trade flows has identified two economic regions in the Asia-Pacific: firstly a Northeast Asian region encompassing Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China, Hong Kong and the United States as a non-Asian nation, and secondly a Southeast Asian group of countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. Though the latter seems to overlap with the ASEAN group of countries, the analysis of trade links within the Southeast Asian group points to the fact that the trade integration within that group is not a result of institutional integration schemes but is due to the Singapore's role as a trade and service centre for the Southeast Asian region.