One of the most striking developments in the world trading system since the early 1990s is a surge in Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). If RTAs reportedly planned or already under negotiation are concluded, the total number of RTAs in force, which was only 50 till 1990, might well approach 300 by the end of 2005. This proliferation of RTAs and their desirability in the current multilateral trade regime are a matter of intense debate among economists. Here we present a set of papers which discusses various aspects of regional trade agreements. While some of the papers presented here deal with the issue of regionalism at a theoretical level, others focus on the working of specific regional trade agreements like NAFTA and AFTA.

• Summary and Recommendations of the Asian Regional Workshop on Bilateral Free Trade Agreements (Kuala Lumpur, 26-28 August 2005)
   Third World Network
    
  This document contains the Summary and Recommendations of the Asian Regional Workshop on Bilateral Free Trade Agreements, which was organized by the Third World Network (TWN) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 26-28 August 2005. It includes sections on the following issues: General, Market Access, Services, Investment, Government Procurement, Competition Policy, Intellectual Property, and Follow up Activities, with an Annex on FTA Cost-benefit Framework.
   
• Regional Trade Agreements in a Multilateral Trade Regime: An Overview
  Parthapratim Pal
  In the backdrop of resurgent regionalism, this paper reviews the literature on Regional Trading Agreements (RTAs). It also discusses various aspects of this new regionalism and its interaction with the multilateral trading system.
   
  
• Regionalism, Foreign Investment and Control : The New Rules of the Game Outside the WTO'
  Jayati Ghosh
  Recent trends in the international economy suggest a shift in the nature of imperialist involvement with the multilateral rules and institutions governing trade and finance. As WTO negotiations are becoming more difficult for the main developed country players to control in the same manner as before, regional and bilateral deals have become the preferred framework for determining patterns of cross-border trade and investment, and for enforcing liberalisation and opening markets in developing countries for multinational capital based in the industrialised nations. Such a shift has both negative and positive implications for the potential for autonomous trade and industrialisation strategies of developing countries. This paper discusses these issues in more detail.
   
  
• Ten years of NAFTA
  Jayati Ghosh
  Experience garnered from ten years of NAFTA suggests that it is mainly the large corporations from the US that have benefited, while almost all of the other promises of the agreement's supporters have turned sour.
   
• Regionalism in South East Asia: The Old and the New
  Smitha Francis
  This paper attempts to examine the extent to which trade integration in the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) has been driven by the liberalisation initiatives under ASEAN's regional integration project through AFTA, AIA, etc., and the extent to which it has been due to synergies between the States and the private sectors in the member countries that evolved out of the dynamics of international production networks created in the region by MNCs.
   
• 'Is There Convergence Between North American Free Trade Agreement Partners?'
  Alicia Puyana & Jose Romero
  Mexico has already gone through two decades of macroeconomic reforms. Among these, the liberation of the economy and its opening have been essential. They were accompanied by political and institutional reforms as well, and these were equally important. All of them were undertaken with the same final goal: speeding up sustained growth , reducing internal gaps and strengthening political democracy.