Experience of the Asian Tigers’ economic reforms: The success factors

Abstract

Economic reforms in the Asian countries have always been of particular interest to the scientific community. The study aims at examining the experience of the Asian Tigers to identify key focuses of the reforms and their success factors to be used for stimulating economic growth and development in other developing countries of the world. Methodologically, the paper relies on the macroeconomics and welfare theory. The researcher applies methods of qualitative and sta tistical analysis, causal analysis as well as observation and synthesis methods. The author brings to a common denominator the basic reforms implemented in the Asian Tigers of the first generation: stimulation of the marker forces in the economy, creation of the favourable business environment, fundamental changes in the tax policy, explicit focus on the export potential, transformation of the financial system, investments into human capital development, and corruption policy. Ac cording to the findings, the success factors are strong political elite and development of a circum spect long-term strategy of economic development to guarantee the consistency of the imple mented reforms. All together these factors generated a market institutional environment, which promoted public welfare in the long run. The results of the study indicate that in their reforms the Asian Tigers put emphasis on the adaptive macroeconomic policy, which allowed reaching tangi ble successes in terms of high economic growth rates and improved population welfare.