Diverse Paths to Industrial Development in East Asia and Asean

Two central facts dominate the history of the world economy over the past two decades - the revolution in computing and communications and the rise of East Asia and ASEAN - although their conjunction is normally regarded as casual rather than causal. Over the same period one key theme in the intellectual history of economics has been the re-examination of the role of innovation and of the creation of new goods in generating growth, these aspects having been excluded by the assumptions of the standard neoclassical models which prevailed for several decades. The revolution in computing and communications has surely led to the most rapid process of creation of new goods that the world has seen, while the sustained pace of economic development in East Asia and ASEAN also has no obvious parallel. This paper attempts to link these two phenomena, and to explore them in the context of new theories of growth based on the intentional creation of new goods. Our aim is to throw some light both on the diverse patterns of growth in East Asia and ASEAN and on the relevance of these new growth theories to the contemporary growth experience