Yu. A. VASINA Graduate student Far Eastern Federal University (Vladivostok) Keywords: regional economic integration, regional trade agreements, free trade area, foreign direct investment, ASEAN In the modern world, regional economic integration (REI), including regional trade agreements (RTAs), is becoming very popular as the most common form of such integration. According to the WTO, to date, almost all its members have indicated their participation in one or more regional trade agreements. At the same time, the number of the latter is steadily increasing every year. In 2014, the WTO registered about 370 fully functioning RTAs (see Figure 1). REI gives its member countries certain advantages, otherwise they would not have concluded any regional agreements at all. The practice of regional integration associations operating in the world shows that integration has a direct impact on various aspects of the economic development of both individual united states and the entire regional integration association as a whole. In the domestic and foreign literature, studies concerning the economic development of countries united in integration groupings are quite widely presented. However, it was only after the formation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1960s that foreign scientists began to consider the influence of REI on the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) as one of the components of economic development. This approach was probably prompted by a sharp increase in the inflow of PII to the EEU countries. To date, a certain theoretical basis has already been accumulated abroad, justifying the link between REI and FDI. As a result of the conducted empirical studies, evidence of this connection was presented on the example of the functioning of integration groups in Europe, North and Latin America, Africa and Asia. ASEAN AS A RECIPIENT OF FDI About 40 years ago, the ASEAN countries were afraid to open their market to foreign investors. They were expected ... Читать далее