The economic interactions cluster studies the characteristics of sub- and supranational regional organisations and other international treaties and gauges their impact on the size and structure of global trade, international production, migration and other variables.
Beyond the study of regional flows, the cluster focuses on the coordination and management of global public goods at the regional level. This includes exploring the role of regions in tax policy, regional financial arrangements, and the political economy of regional initiatives. Additionally, it brings together research on monitoring sustainable development within a multi-level governance framework and conducting environmental impact assessments.
The cluster studies regional organisations’ policy scope and institutional structure using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. This includes merging, cleaning, and imputing datasets, developing econometric estimation techniques, and using network analysis tools, as well as desk research, policy analysis, and in-depth interviews on case studies
The cluster also manages the Regional Integration Knowledge System, 海角社区-CRIS's data platform. This platform provides researchers, policymakers, civil society, and journalists with reliable information on regionalisation patterns in the global system and the evolution of regional organisations. It shares data on regional organisation membership, the legal content of the treaties on which they are based, and other datasets on de jure and de facto regional integration.
Goals
- Assess the direct and indirect effects of international economic agreements.
- Estimate the impact of regional integration on the relationship between globalisation and redistribution within and between countries
- Study the issue of global economic fragmentation and the rise of regional economic partnerships
- Study economic policies at the regional level, e.g. taxation.
- Improve our understanding of the de facto level of regional integration and tracking, especially regarding the movement of migrants worldwide.
- Use network analysis to track the regional structure and evolution of trade, investment, and migration flows globally.
- Examine the increasing complexity created by the growth of overlapping trade agreements and investment agreements (the spaghetti bowl) and assess its impact.
- Create indicators that compare detailed information on the scope and institutional structure of regional organisations.
- Develop localised indicators and monitoring frameworks of sustainable development and study the tension between the global framework and (the variation in) the local implementation.
- Use the Regional Integration Knowledge System (RIKS) website to share the research data on regional integration with a broad audience.
Projects (example)
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