The Miracle of East Asian Growth

Abstract

When in 1993 the World Bank published a book with the dramatic title The East Asian Miracle it gave currency to an already widespread perception and interpretation of the growth process in that region. This particular study singled out eight economies: Japan, the ‘Four Tigers’ and three Southeast Asian countries. These economies were called the high-performing Asian economies (HPAEs). The book pointed out that since 1960, the HPAEs have grown more than twice as fast as the rest of East Asia, roughly three times as fast as Latin America and South Asia, and five times faster than Sub-Saharan Africa. They also significantly outperformed the industrial economies and the oil-rich Middle East-North Africa region. Between 1960 and 1985, real income per capita increased more than four times in Japan and the Four Tigers and more than doubled in the Southeast Asian NIEs. If growth were randomly distributed, there is roughly one chance in ten thousand that success would have been so regionally concentrated. (World Bank 1993: 2)