East Asian Growth before and after the Crisis

Abstract

The paper surveys the literature on the growth performance of the East Asian economies, evaluates the sustainability of that performance, and provides a preliminary assessment of their long-term growth prospects in the aftermath of the current crisis. It highlights special features of East Asian growth, including unusually high factor accumulation and a favorable demographic transition, but argues that total factor productivity growth has generally been somewhat disappointing. It argues that there are downside risks to the East Asian developmental state model, and that it may become less attractive as these economies mature. Copyright 1999, International Monetary Fund