Business: Banking & Finance: Globalization: Economics

From Macquarie Dictionary of Australian Politics
In international politics, a group of nations concerting their strategic or economic policies, often within a formal alliance system and under the leadership of a big power. Contemporary examples include the Soviet bloc and the Western bloc, but the Third World countries are also sometimes referred to as a bloc, when they act together on racial or colonial issues at the United Nations or in the Non-Aligned Movement. Australia is a member of the Western bloc.

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) process was the first structured forum for intergovernmental cooperation among the economies of East Asia and their main trading partners in North America, Australasia, and Russia.

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was formed in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Brunei joined in 1984 and Vietnam in 1995. Originally an anticommunist alliance, ASEAN is now an organization for economic cooperation composed of the fastest growing "Asian tigers."

From Globalization: Encyclopedia of Trade, Labor, and Politics
In practice, the council has worked to promote greater economic cooperation among Arab countries and to bring an end to the intense competition among them that in the past tended to weaken the economies of the various Arab states.

From Globalization: Encyclopedia of Trade, Labor, and Politics
The East African Community (EAC) is a regional bloc in East Africa consisting of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.

An economic and political grouping that was formed (1993) to extend the European Community by adding common foreign and security policies to the single market. MORE

An international financial organization set up to promote trade by keeping currencies stable and having a fund of money from which member states may borrow. MORE

From Webster's New World Finance and Investment Dictionary
A monetary agreement between eight countries in Western Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivôire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The common currency of the WAEMU is the CFA franc, or franc de la Communauté Financiére de l’Afrique.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Specialized agency of the United Nations that borrows in the commercial market and lends on commercial terms. It was established in 1945 under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, which also created the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The International Development Association is an arm of the World Bank.

An international body concerned with promoting and regulating trade between its member states; established in 1995 as a successor to GATT.

From Encyclopedia of Nationalism: Leaders, Movements, and Concepts
This particular brand of nationalism is premised on the belief that the overall success of the nation lies in, or at the very least is intimately connected with, the successful control of the national economy.

The basic argument for free trade is based on the economic theory of comparative advantage: each region should concentrate on what it can produce most cheaply and efficiently and should exchange its products for those it is less able to produce economically.

Advocacy of the mercantile system, an old economic strategy based on the theory that a nation’s interests were best served by development of overseas trade and restriction of imports. MORE

From Globalization: Encyclopedia of Trade, Labor, and Politics
“Protectionism” refers to the imposition of barriers to international trade by government entities. These barriers usually involve either taxes on imports—that is, tariffs—or quantitative restrictions limiting the volume of legally allowable imports of particular goods—or quotas—to achieve various economic and political targets.

From The Penguin Dictionary of Economics
A customs-defined area in which goods or services may be processed or transacted without attracting taxes or duties or being subjected to certain government regulations.

From The Dictionary of Human Geography
A term often coupled with globalization, and typically associated with claims about the virtues of free trade and unregulated capital markets.

From The Penguin Dictionary of Economics
A general term covering any government limitation on the free international exchange of merchandise.

From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations
Any group of states whose members concert their trade policies. This may take the form of a preferential tariff, a free trade area, or a customs union.