Martin Andersson
Senior lecturer
Resilience to economic shrinking: reinterpreting the Asian economic miracle in a comparative perspective, 1964–2018
Author
Summary, in English
The successful economic performance of Pacific Asia is often held as a source of inspiration for aspiring catching-up countries. Notwithstanding, recent literature suggests that a key to the understanding of successful long-term economic performance lies not only in the ability to generate economic growth, but in limiting incidences of economic shrinking. Such analyses to explain the Asian economic miracle are however in short supply. This study highlights the significance of economic shrinking in Asia in a comparative perspective to demonstrate how and why resilience to economic shrinking was a significant aspect of the successful development of the region. To approach the question of why some countries became more resilient than others we propose a social capability framework and apply it to a sample of 26 developing countries between 1964 and 2018. We construct a social capability index on which we develop a set of simple OLS regressions to estimate the impact of social capabilities on shrinking patterns. We demonstrate that poorly endowed countries do not lack the ability to generate growth, but their limited resilience prevents them from catching up.
Department/s
- Department of Economic History
- Economic development of the Global South
- LU Profile Area: Human rights
- Centre for Economic Demography
Publishing year
2024-02-15
Language
English
Pages
1-23
Publication/Series
Development Studies Research
Volume
11
Issue
1
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Topic
- Economic History
Keywords
- Social capabilities
- economic shrinking
- Asian economic miracle
- resilience
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 2166-5095