Services Trade in ASEAN: The Road Taken and the Journey Ahead

The member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) set themselves the ambitious aim of establishing a region-wide economic community by 2015, and to deepen it in the context of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint 2025. To achieve these goals, service sector reforms will occupy a central place in ASEAN’s policy pantheon. This can be attributed to both ASEAN’s integration process and its deepening ties within a dense layer of external economic partners. This book takes stock of the experience of ASEAN member states in pursuing trade and investment liberalization in services. It identifies key challenges that the regional grouping can be expected to encounter in realizing its AEC Blueprint 2025 aims. Using a law and economics lens, the book assesses where ASEAN is and is headed in services trade, situating it alongside efforts at crafting a European single market for services.