ABSTRACT
Global economic cooperation will be different in the 21st century. The provision of global public goods (GPGs) by the United States has been particularly important for maintaining world order and sustained economic development since the mid-20th century. Public goods can be available at the global, regional, national, and community levels. Attention to regional cooperation and regional public goods (RPGs) is critical as efforts evolve to avoid the middle-income trap through strategies for national and local development. To more fully lay the groundwork for understanding the role of RPGs in the global order, this chapter discusses five sets of concepts in a context in which regional cooperation is understood as being important both for the global order and for national development. These are the definition of "public goods"; sequencing in the process of public goods creation; the geographic scope of "regions" as they relate to public goods; an institutional design for RPG creation; and measuring the output of RPG cooperation agreements.
