The Role Of Government In East Asian Economic Development

The role of government in East Asian economic development has been a continuous issue. Two competing views have shaped enquiries into the source of the rapid growth high-performing Asian economies and attempts to derive a general lesson for other developing economies: the market-friendly view, according to which government intervenes little in the market, and the developmental state view, in which it governs the market. What these views share in common is a conception of market and government as alternative mechanisms for resource allocation. They are distinct only in their judgement of the extent to which market failures have been, and ought to be, remedied by direct government intervention. This collection of essays suggests a breakthrough, third view: the market-enhancing view. Instead of viewing government and the market as mutually exclusive substitutes, it examines the capacity of government policy to facilitate or complement private sector co-ordination. The book starts from the premise that private sector institutions have important comparative advantages over government, in particular in their ability to process information available on site. At the same time, it recognizes that the capabilities of the private sector are more limited in developing economies. The market-enhancing view thus stresses the mechanisms whereby government policy is directed at improving the ability of the private sector to solve co-ordination problems and overcome other market imperfections. In presenting the market-enhancing view, the book recognizes the wide diversity of the roles of government across various East Asian economies-including Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and China-and its path-dependant and developmental stage nature.

Instead of viewing government and the market as mutually exclusive, this collection of essays examines the capacity of government policy to facilitate or complement private sector coordination.

Published originally in 1990 to critical acclaim, Robert Wade's Governing the Market quickly established itself as a standard in contemporary political economy. In it, Wade challenged claims both of those who saw the East Asian story as a vindication of free market principles and of those who attributed the success of Taiwan and other countries to government intervention. Instead, Wade turned attention to the way allocation decisions were divided between markets and public administration and the synergy between them. Now, in a new introduction to this paperback edition, Wade reviews the debate about industrial policy in East and Southeast Asia and chronicles the changing fortunes of these economies over the 1990s. He extends the original argument to explain the boom of the first half of the decade and the crash of the second, stressing the links between corporations, banks, governments, international capital markets, and the International Monetary Fund. From this, Wade goes on to outline a new agenda for national and international development policy.

Given the impressive growth in East Asia after World War II, initially led by Japan, the region's development models have been scrutinized since the 1980s. The shared Confucian cultural heritage, strong government guidance, and export led economies were often cited as contributors to the impressive growth. However, major changes have taken place in Asia on and around the turn of the century: Japan experienced two decades of economic slow-down, while World Bank figures reveal that China is poised to become the largest economy in the world in 2014, overtaking the United States. Bearing this in mind, is it even possible to formulate an East Asian development model in the context of a shifting twenty-first century? And if so, what is it? This book addresses this issue by looking at the economic, political and cultural perspectives of China, Japan and South Korea, focusing on dynamism and potential consensus regarding an East Asian development model. The chapters offer a historical background to the East Asian development model, as well as in-depth case studies of each of the countries concerned to show that whilst the East Asian development model does have distinct characteristics as compared with other areas, and other countries may draw some insights from the East Asian experience, it is not a panacea that fits all circumstances and fits all times. This book will be welcomed by students and scholars of Asian economics, Asian politics, international political economy and development studies.

A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary analysis of the evolution of successful economic policies in East Asia, this study advances a thorough examination of the sustained economic growth enjoyed by the countries in this region.

The phenomenal success of the East Asian Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore is now well-known and documented. Their success has been discussed to such an extent that it has become entrenched as part of the folklore of development economics. The Newly Industrializing Economies of East Asia takes a fresh look at the relevant literature and sifts the rhetoric from the reality. In the course of surveying the vast range of writing two competing paradigms become clear: the neo-classical approach which interprets the East Asian economic miracle as the predictable outcome of `good' policies; and the statist perspective which draws attention to the central role of the government in guiding East Asian economic development. Throughout the book the authors mix country-specific experiences with broader trends.

In a systematic study of the political economy of East Asia, Cai adopts an historical perspective alongside a contemporary focus, exploring East Asia's development since the late 19th century. Following similar paths to economic development, East Asian states have achieved economic success, integrating themselves into a regional economy.