Competitive Regionalism: FTA Diffusion in the Pacific Rim

Despite abundant scepticism about their economic benefits, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have proliferated at a rapid pace. Policy diffusion models explain how different sets of preferential trade agreements are interconnected and establish under what conditions FTAs can work for or against the emergence of coherent regional blocs.

MIREYA SOLlS is Associate Professor at the School of International Service of American University, Washingston D.C., USA. She is the author of Banking on Multinationals (2004) and co-editor of Cross-Regional Trade Agreements (2008).

BARBARA STALLINGS is William R. Rhodes Research Professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, Providence, USA, and editor of Studies in Comparative International Development. Previously, she was Director or the Economic Development Division, United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Professor of Political Economy, Universtity of Wisconsin, USA. Her most recent book is Finance for Development: Latin America in Comparitive Perspective.

SAORI N. KATADA is Associate Professor at the School of International Relations, University of Southern California, USA. Her book Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (2001) has received a Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book Award.