Analyzing leading and coincident indicators for Pacific Basin countries

In the years since the end of the Second World War the global economy, even that part of it which has traditionally been market-oriented, has shifted focus in many significant ways. Not least has been the necessity for economists in the older industrialized market countries to readjust from preoccupation largely with the industrialized economies of Europe and North America to paying significantly more attention to the countries of the Pacific. There have been variations among the growth rates of individual countries. But these differences cannot mask the major conclusion which emerges from consideration of regional growth rates-the burgeoning of the Pacific region as an economic force in the modern world. The rising importance of the Pacific, coupled with the refocusing of macroeconomic analysis generally from closed economy to open economy analysis, has meant that both for assessing economic growth and monitoring cyclical instability the Pacific Basin countries are a major new force to be reckoned with