Economic policy and development in South-East Asian Economies

Abstract

The importance of South-east Asian economies in the world economy became apparent through their rapid increasing shares in the world trade. The fast growing trade sector in these countries enabled a near double digit economic growth rate in the 1970s and 1980s. When a group of under-developed economies quickly turns themselves into emerging economies and gain a reputation as an 'Asian Miracle', this naturally attracts economists' attention into the field. The key driving force of the growth rate in these countries was seen to be exports and investment, this has been emphasized and accepted in a large number of papers.

However, an equally interesting question concerns the relative growth rates of economies within the region, an issue which the first paper, Comparative Economic Development, of this thesis will investigate. Korea, Thailand and the Philippines were at a similar state of development with comparable level of GNP per capita in 1960, but had achieved very different levels of economic success by 1990. Ironically, among the three countries in consideration, the Philippines was endowed with the most favourable human and capital resources but turned out to be the least successful economy 30 years afterward, and the opposite is true for Korea. Although regression results confirm that their growth rates have been influenced by common factors such as exports and investment, their relative success can partially be explained by differences in other factors captured in the model. To what extent do these other factors play a role in explaining their relative growth rate during 1960-1990? Were they country-specific factors - or can they be duplicated in other countries? The first paper attempts to provide insights to these questions and to identify the key ingredients of economic success.

Regardless of relative economic success found within the region, these South-east Asian countries have recorded the highest average growth rates among developing countries. However, this reputation was shattered when the financial crisis broke out in one of the fast growing economies in the region, Thailand. This crisis was largely unanticipated in terms of its timing and severity and economists are still to agree on its root causes. The second paper tries to identify the cause of the crisis by examining what actually happened during the few years preceding the crisis in the original country where the crisis broke out.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

ASCII CitationAtomBibTeXData Cite XMLDublin CoreDublin CoreEP3 XMLEndNoteHTML CitationHTML CitationHTML ListJSONMETSMODSMPEG-21 DIDLOpenURL ContextObjectOpenURL ContextObject in SpanRDF+N-TriplesRDF+N3RDF+XMLRIOXX2 XMLReferReference ManagerSimple Metadata