ASEAN Chronicles: Trade Exposure, Regional Integration, and Global Rebalancing

Since the Asian crisis of the late 1990s, many well-documented trends have irrevocably altered the global economy-the rise of China, the relative decline of Japan, and the consumption boom in the United States that culminated in the global financial crisis beginning in 2008. Behind these trends were unmistakable shifts in the shares of output, value added, and demand among economies and in cross-border production processes. The ASEAN economies have played an important role in the shifting contours of the global economy over the past 15 years. With their rapid growth, they are progressively becoming more prominent on the world stage, and they are also an integral part of the debate on global imbalances. This new Occasional Paper examines the shifting patterns of trade and cross-country integration of production structures among the ASEAN economies over the last decade. The paper provides significantly more comprehensive analysis than any other comparable publication on the market, including analyzing the consequences for ASEAN economies of a possible reconstitution of demand in the global economy.