imgdb is a project I actually completed a few years ago that I finally have prepared for public release. It’s a PHP library that sets up an image gallery that allows collaborative uploading and tagging of images and easy browsing. Check out a demo, visit the git repo, or just download.
December 29, 2011
April 24, 2011
April 14, 2011
Future trends in Asian trade liberalization
This is a draft of an article to be published in the Spring 2011 issue of Business Asia.
The expansive and rapid growth of export-driven Asian economies over the past two decades has been largely coincident with the development of various free trade agreements, most notably the successful negotiation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in 1989[1] and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Free Trade Area in 1992.[2] Regional economic integration and trade liberalization have been an instrumental component of Asia’s economic growth, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.[3] Yet the slowdown in global trade talks, in particular the prolonged delay in Doha round negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO)[4], have motivated Asian countries to develop bilateral free trade agreements as alternatives to multilateral trading regimes like the WTO.[5]
The proliferation of free trade agreements has accelerated immensely since 2000[6], at which point only eight were in effect. Today East Asia has in place 74 FTAs, with dozens more under negotiation.[7] The changing nature of trade terms in Asia has the potential to create both disruptions in commerce and have conflicting effects on multilateral trade agreements, in large part due to the highly politicized nature of individual trade agreements and inevitable overlap between complicated labeling and certifications rules on Asian firms. This phenomenon has been referred to as the Asian “noodle bowl”[8], which has been the modus operandi for Asian trade talks for the past few years. While trade agreements are almost always designed in a manner that benefit domestic business environments, some critics such as Masahiro Kawai and Ganeshan Wignaraja of the Asian Development Bank argue that “the plethora of overlapping and complex FTAs in East Asia carries the risk of becoming unwieldy and making business cumbersome.”[9] The divergence between increasing trade volume and decreasing export share in East Asia seems to confirm that changes in trade policy since 2000 have increased trade flow at the expense of the competitiveness of Asian firms.
New Site
Welcome to the new website! More will be posted shortly. For nicer looking sites that I’m working on, check out CUSD, Cornell Forensics, and CU Winds.
May 16, 2009
Nerf Sentry Gun
The Nerf Sentry Gun that Jeremy Blum and I worked on as a final project is completed. You can view the video, photos, and source code over at Jeremy’s blog.
UPDATE: You can check out the hackaday article about the project.
