East Asian Growth Research Articles

On Pacific Economic Integration

While the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations is stalled, regional integration has proliferated. The Uruguay Round is most likely to end with a smaller package of achievements than anticipated at Punta del Este in I986. Even if it is concluded, it is inevitable that the contracting parties will attempt to pursue their aims by means of alternative routes liberalisation efforts among like-minded countries in their neighbourhood. Regional integration efforts in the Pacific is no exception of this trend. However, its form and extent differs from that in Europe and North America. The word 'integration' is perhaps too strong in popular usage to describe its regionalism and may be better replaced by 'cooperation'. The aim of this paper is to analyse the current state of economic integration efforts in the Pacific region and to correct possible misunderstanding of its characteristics. Despite the absence of a formal framework, regional integration without a discriminatory impact on outsiders will help the region to achieve its high growth potential. The analysis will proceed as follows. Sections II and III give a statistical overview of the growth of the Pacific region in recent years, identifies East Asia as the core of the region's growth, and evaluates the mechanisms underlying East Asia's growth. That growth is trade-oriented and needs a free trade regime to sustain it. Section IV explains how there has been no region-wide integration framework, and several sub-regional groupings are characterised by informal arrangements with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) being the exception. The limited achievements of the Uruguay Round has led this grouping to explore the possibility of further liberalisation (Section V). However, there seems to be a consensus in the region that it requires only a loose form of integration. The current region-wide framework the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) process will be analysed in this context in Section VI. The last Section will conclude with the likely agenda for the APEC.

Market, Culture, and Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Management and Organization in the Far East

Three frameworks purport to explain industrial arrangements and practices: a market approach that emphasizes economic characteristics, a cultural approach that sees organization as the expression of patterned values, and an authority approach that explains organization as a historically developed structure of domination. The efficacy of each approach is tested in explaining the organizational structures of three rapidly growing East Asian economies: Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The paper argues through comparative analysis that organizational growth is best explained by market and cultural factors but that authority patterns and legitimation strategies best explain organizational structure.

Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory

A modification of economic analysis to incorporate incomplete information and uncertain foresight as axioms is suggested here. This approach dispenses with “profit maximization”; and it does not rely on the predictable, individual behavior that is usually assumed, as a first approximation, in standard textbook treatments. Despite these changes, the analytical concepts usually associated with such behavior are retained because they are not dependent upon such motivation or foresight. The suggested approach embodies the principles of biological evolution and natural selection by interpreting the economic system as an adoptive mechanism which chooses among exploratory actions generated by the adaptive pursuit of “success” or “profit.” The resulting analysis is applicable to actions usually regarded as aberrations from standard economic behavior as well as to behavior covered by the customary analysis. This wider applicability and the removal of the unrealistic postulates of accurate anticipations and fixed states of knowledge have provided motivation for the study.