"Success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan" on explaining the Asian miracle

Asian countries made remarkable economic progress. They have transformed themselves from technologically backwards and poor, to modern and affluent economies. Impressive advances in social development accompanied this rapid growth. Also contrary to earlier conventional wisdom, this rapid growth was achieved without increases in income inequality. This paper will try to find explanations for the Asian miracle to draw some lessons to other developing countries. The Key Messages of this paper are that reform must begin with the government, reforms are not one- time actions, maintaining consistency is a crucial factor for success, introducing new systems for reform doesn’t matter much; what matters is how to implement them and how to make them deep-rooted, reformers should be well aware of true nature of reform process, and reforming culture is more important and takes more time than reforming system