Events

How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region

Joe Studwell’s latest book proposes that the story of East Asian development is the key to understanding the nature of economic development worldwide. He dissects the region’s history to show how, for many years, heady economic growth rates masked the most divided continent in the world – a north-east Asian group of states that is the most extraordinary developmental success story ever seen, a south-east Asian group that proved to be a paper tiger.

Studwell finds that land reform and complementary policies to maximise agricultural yields, an acute focus on manufacturing industry that was combined with ‘export discipline’ to extract high returns from industrial subsidies, and financial repression and protection, were the keys to successful accelerated economic development. As a result he answers Kindleberger’s famous question about whether there is more than one kind of economics by concluding there are at least two: the economics of development and the economics that confront countries once they achieve a modest level of wealth. He also offers new theoretical ideas to explain why the developmental role of manufacturing is so important.

How Asia Works is the first book to offer an Asia-wide deconstruction of success and failure in economic development. Joe will discuss the journeys through Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines with which he iluminates his arguments.