reduced applied tariffs in the region. However, even though the number of trade agreements has grown, they remain relatively shallow and fragmented in nature.

Developing East Asian countries are involved in a growing number of preferential trade agreements. The “noodle bowl” of Asian trade agreements has become denser in the last decade. Developing East Asian countries have signed a total of 36 PTAs.<sup>22</sup> Since some of these agreements involve several countries, such as the Association of East Asian Nations (ASEAN), each developing East Asian country has on average an agreement with 8 partners. While the proliferation of overlapping trade agreements has certainly contributed to the reduction of tariffs and other non‐ tariff restrictions to trade, it also creates multiple, and possibly inconsistent, trade rules. The risk is that divergent trade rules may create costs for businesses and lower the efficiency of global and regional value chains (Baldwin and Kawai, 2013).

The content of East Asian trade agreements has also changed over time. ASEAN provides a good example of this evolving content. The free trade area, liberalizing goods trade among ASEAN economies, was established in 1992. Subsequent protocols covering services and intellectual property rights were added in 1995, an investment agreement and dispute settlement mechanism was included in 1996, and a framework agreement for the mutual recognition of standards was signed in 1998. In some cases, the new set of rules are of a legally binding nature, as for investment (WTO, 2011). For other policy areas, such as intellectual property rights protection, cooperation is only on a best‐endeavor basis, As the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services reflects. The extent of commitments in the agreement is limited, but the agreement does make references to schedules of commitments (Art. X) and a few more specific concessions.

International agreements have not played a significant role in driving regional services reform. Drawing on surveys of applied policies in the key services sectors of ASEAN countries, Gootiiz and Mattoo (2017) assessed the impact of the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS) and the ambitious ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint, which envisaged integrated services markets by 2015 (Table 8). The analysis finds that over this period, ASEAN did not integrate faster internally than vis‐à‐vis the rest of the world: policies applied to trade with other ASEAN countries were virtually the same as those applied to trade with the rest of the world. Moreover, the recent commitments scheduled under AFAS did not produce significant liberalization and, in a few instances, services trade policy actually became more restrictive. The two exceptions are in areas that are not on the multilateral negotiating agenda: steps have been taken toward creating regional open skies in air transport, and a few mutual recognition agreements have been negotiated in professional services. These findings suggest that regional negotiations have added the most value when they were focused on areas that are not being addressed multilaterally.

> 22 In addition, developing East Asian countries are also members of 6 partial scope agreements that cover only a limited number of products.

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