Economic Integration in East Asia ─ Production Networks and Small and Medium Enterprises

International production networks in manufacturing, particularly in machinery industries, have rapidly developed over the last two decades, resulting in dramatic increases in intra-regional and intra-industry trade, providing a key source of regional growth, integration and development in East Asia. This book provides a better understanding on how to effectively further increase SME participation in East Asian production networks, and in doing so identifies key challenges and issues that they need to address. This book aims to not only fill the theory-practice gap, but also to lay solid foundations for designing national arrangements and a regional institutional frameworks to further encourage and support SME engagement and participation in regional and global production networks.

The book contains several country case studies and by drawing upon individual country experiences, at various stages of economic development, this book demonstrates the varying difficulty faced by SMEs in ASEAN member countries attempting to participate in regional production networks and highlighting differences in needs and policy priorities.

This book offers both a more focused theme on the assessment of globalization and a rather unique approach by focusing upon the particular importance of SMEs, and by utilizing micro-level data at the firm or plant level. Its policy insights and the richness and uniqueness of the empirical findings will make the book an invaluable contribution to understanding East Asian production networks.

Charles Harvie is currently the Director of the Centre for Small Business and Regional Research at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is the sole or joint author of 6 books and the editor of a further 10 books published by Edward Elgar (UK/USA) and Palgrave-Macmillan (UK). He has published over two hundred articles in the form of refereed journal articles, book chapters and refereed conference papers.

Dionisius Narjoko is a researcher at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA). Dr. Narjoko received his PhD in Economics from the Australian National University. His research concentrates on the topics related to industrial organization, international trade, and development economics, including industrialization.

Sothea Oum, an Economist, joined the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) Jakarta in 2009, Indonesia as an Associate Researcher after completing his PhD in Economics from Monash University, Australia. At ERIA, he manages region-wide research projects for ASEAN and East Asian economies. Besides computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling, his research interests are on ASEAN and East Asian integration and community building process, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Social Protection, Disaster Management, Income Distribution, and Poverty.