To Cooperate or Not to Cooperate - Japan's Potential for Regional Economic Integration

 Japan nowadays faces a number of important choices concerning the ifs and hows of her cooperation with other Asian nations. These choices comprise all forms of integration agreements, from bilateral treaties on trade to ‘economic partnership agreements’ covering trade, investment, migration and other economic links between a multiple of countries.
Japan has concluded agreements with Singapore and Mexico and also declared her support for the ASEAN+3 format, but international politics will likely hamper progress in the later more comprehensive forum for the foreseeable future. There are also a number of stumbling blocks to further bilateral agreements.

This presentation aims to establish what an integration agreement acceptable to Japan might look like. To this end, we examine her production and trade structure, interests in international financial and macroeconomic relations, and domestic political arrangements. The idea is to isolate influences that have the potential to shape Japan’s stance in international economic negotiations, and thus to arrive at a rather general idea of what kind of integration agreement Japan might want to enter in Asia.

Short CV:
Klaus-Jochem Kecker is a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Bochum in Germany, and currently doing research for his dissertation
and the DIJ. His research interests are regional integration,
international trade and international macroeconomics.