Revista de Economie Mondiala/ Journal of Global Economics

1-19

Authors: Agnes Ghibuțiu, Iulia Monica Oehler Șincai

In March 2013, the EU and Japan launched negotiations for a comprehensive free trade agreement (FTA). The EU also announced starting of similar negotiations with the United States. Japan decided to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership under negotiation among 11 developed and developing nations in Asia-Pacific. FTAs are not new for the multilateral trading system. Striking is, however, the outstanding pace of the new trade deals among traditional trading powers. Our paper addresses the significance of the EU-Japan FTA. It first discusses the new FTA from a broader perspective, focusing on the difficulties and ongoing structural changes in the world economy. Second, it explores its importance through the lens of EU-Japan bilateral trade relations. It concludes that the recent push for FTAs by the big trading powers is a rapid means of mutual market opening in the context of reforming the very fundamentals of their economic and trade policies, as a response to the financial crisis and the shift in economic power from developed to developing countries.

1-17

Authors: Alina Ligia Dumitrescu

Coordination among supervisors in financial and banking system is vital, but the financial crisis has shown that is not enough, and especially in the context of a single currency would require more common actions in EU. Therefore, the European Commission proposed “the creation of a banking union”, in order to place the banking sector on a more solid base and to restore confidence in the single currency, as part of a longer-term vision for the promotion of the economic and fiscal integration. Therefore, the new direction of the reform of the financial sector is "the creation of a banking union", that will help: to strengthen banks supervision, to ensure better deposits security, to recapitalize banks and last but not least to achieve the centralized management of the banking crises.

1-16

Authors: Maria Cartas

Trends and prospects of international major commodity prices. In 2012, the international commodity markets have seen declining prices, especially during the first half of the year, with some improvement mainly in the last quarter. On the whole, most of major commodity prices declined, following generally weaker demand and the uncertain global economic situation. The short term outlook shows broad declines of prices for all major commodity groups, including oil and excepting metal prices, which are expected to be sustained by the global economic recovery and increasing demand, mainly in China. This country represents a major player, with a great contribution to the movement of prices on most of international commodity markets, as she has a great role in the world consumption and trade of commodities, as well as in the world production of some of these goods, on the one hand, and enjoys huge financial resources, on the other.