East Asia’s Economic Prospects

Sub-Saharan Africa has recently enjoyed a surge in economic growth due to the rising prices of its commodities and natural resources. To sustain this growth in the face of intensifying global competition, African countries may wish to align their tertiary education and research systems more closely to national economic development based on a deepening of technological capabilities and local labor markets. This will require governments and societies to make strategic choices and targeted investments in specific types of training, specific disciplinary areas, and specific institutions. The success of this strategy will depend in large measure on greater financial efforts by governments and households, new public-private partnerships that tap into business resources, the innovation of radically different, lower cost ways of providing good quality tertiary education to growing numbers of students, and greater research and development.

Toward a Knowledge Economy in Thailand
Published February 2008

Sustaining strong economic performance by enhancing productivity through innovation, buttressed by

higher rates of private investment, is an objective for the Thai economy and is reflected in the country’s Tenth Economic and Social Development Plan. This objective needs to be made central and urgent if Thailand is to join the ranks of the high income countries within the next two decades. A handful of economies in East Asia, including the Republic of Korea, Taiwan (China) and Singapore, have already made the transition to high levels of per capita income. For Thailand to emulate some of the more successful economies in the region, it must embrace the challenge of achieving rapid growth led by gains in productivity. The measures proposed in this report and the further analytic work which it highlights should help Thailand reach this objective in an increasingly competitive global environment.

Growing Industrial Clusters in Asia: Serendipity and Science
Edited by Shahid Yusuf , Kaoru Nabeshima , Shoichi Yamashita
Published March 2008

Industrial clusters in Silicon Valley, in Hsinchu Park, in Northern Italy, and around Cambridge, U.K. have captured the imagination of policymakers, researchers, city planners and business people. Where clusters take root, they can generate valuable spillovers, promote innovation, and create the critical industrial mass for sustained growth. For cities faced with the hallowing out of their industrial sectors and economic decline such as Kitakyushu in Japan, creating a cluster which would reverse the trends, is enormously attractive. By synthesizing the essential conditions and policies responsible for the dynamism and resilience of successful clusters, this volume delineates both the conditions which contributed to past successes, and also how the reading of this experience is being used to seed new clusters in Singapore, Bangalore and Seoul. The volume sheds fresh light on the promise of clusters, the challenges facing policymakers and the track record to date of progress with promising new starts.

China Urbanizes: Consequences, Strategies, and Policies
Edited by Shahid Yusuf , Anthony Saich
Published January 2008

The key challenges facing China in the next two decades derive from the ongoing process of urbanization. China's urbanization rate in 2005 was about 43%. Over the next 10-15 years, it is expected to rise to well over 50%, adding an additional 200 million mainly rural migrants to the current urban population of 560 million. How China copes with such a large migration flow will strongly influence rural-urban inequality, the pace at which urban centers expand their economic performance, and the urban environment. The growing population will necessitate a big push strategy to maintain a high rate of investment in housing and the urban physical infrastructure and urban services. To finance such expansion will require a significant strengthening and diversification of China's financial system. Growing cities will greatly increase consumption of energy and water. Containing this without at the same time constraining the economic performance of cities or the improvement in the standards of living will call for enlightened policies, strategies, careful urban planning, and significant technological advances. This volume identifies the key developments to watch and discusses the policies which would affect the course as well as the fruitfulness of change.

Dancing with Giants
By L. Alan Winters and Shahid Yusuf
Published January 2007

China is now the world's fourth largest economy and growing very fast. India's economic salience is also on the rise. Together these two countries will profoundly influence the pace and nature of global economic change. Drawing upon the latest research, this volume analyzes the influences on the rapid future development of these two countries and examines how their growth is likely to impinge upon other countries. It considers international trade, industrialization, foreign investment and capital flows, and the implications of their broadening environmental footprints. It also discusses how the two countries have tackled poverty, inequality and governance issues and whether progress in these areas will be a key to rapid and stable growth.

How Universities Promote Economic Growth
By Shahid Yusuf , Kaoru Nabeshima
Published December 2006

How Universities Promote Economic Growth Book Cover

With technological capability increasingly becoming the touchstone of competitiveness in an open and integrated world environment, the role of universities in economic growth is taking on a greater salience. Not only do they impart education but also they are coming to be viewed as sources of industrially valuable technical skills, innovations and entrepreneurship. Realizing this potential of universities so as to spur growth is now a priority in developed and developing countries. This calls for coordinated policy actions. The distinguished contributors to this volume examine the wealth of international experience on the efforts underway to multiply linkages between universities and businesses. They offer valuable and succinct guidance on some of the most effective policy measures being deployed by national and regional governments, by firms and by universities themselves to enhance the contribution which tertiary institutions can make to economic change.

Post-Industrial East Asian Cities
By Shahid Yusuf , Kaoru Nabeshima

Post-Industrial East Asian Cities Book Cover

Published August 2006

Throughout East Asia, the growth process and its sources are changing in a number of important respects, especially for middle- and high-income economies. Grwoth is increasingly coming from the strength of innovative activities in these economies rather than from factor accumulation as in the past. Such innovative activities - are concentrated in high-tech clusters in globally linked cities.

Drawing on a wide range of literature and on interviews of firms, this book explores these issues with a focus on six East Asian cities: Bangkok, Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. It suggests how policies and institutions can induce and furnish an urban environment that supports innovative activities. A valuable resource for researchers, urban planners, urban geographers, and policy makers interested in East Asia, Post-Industrial East Asian Cities presents the latest findings on creative industries in East Asia and their effect on urban economic growth.

China’s Development Priorities
By Shahid Yusuf , Kaoru Nabeshima
Published May 2006

Over the past two decades China's growth has been rapid, social indicators have improved, and poverty levels have inched downward. However,widening inequality, increasing resource and financial imbalances, and growing environmental concerns provide China with daunting challenges in improving the quality of growth. The rapid growth that will remain China's principal vehicle for raising standards of living and reducing poverty will derive from urbanization, increased market efficiency, and improvement in the technological capability of Chinese firms. But although growth will be critically important, balance among income groups and sectors is likely to be vital for social stability. The needed measures to enhance the quantity and quality of social services and a more effective safety net for the poor will require a number of institutional changes, including a reform of intergovernmental fiscal relations. Directed at readers working in economic policy, poverty reduction, social development, and urban and municipal finance,China's Development Priorities highlights the significance of the challenges facing China and suggests policies for achieving rapid, balanced, and sustainable growth.

Although China?s centrally planned economy is a little more than a shadow of its former self, the closely inter-linked reforms of the enterprise and banking sectors are still incomplete. The relative size of the state-owned enterprise sector has been much reduced, however, the sector remains the dominant borrower from the banking system and is responsible for the majority of bank non-performing assets. Thus in the interests of financial stability it is crucial to implement the remaining reform agenda. The accession to the WTO has also made it more urgent for China?s most-dynamic state-owned enterprises and her banking industry to compete through innovation, continuing process upgrades, and active pursuit of strategies aimed at succeeding in global markets. In order to do so, not only do large state-owned industrial enterprises need to be privatized, but the government also needs to create the conditions that will result in market determined consolidation of small and medium size firms into entities with a core strength.

Under New Ownership explores the effects of ownership reform in China on the performance of reformed industrial state-owned enterprises, and proposes privatization as a course of action to truly transform these enterprises into world class firms which compete on the basis of sound strategy, effective organization, and innovation. It draws upon newly collected firm level survey data to assess changes in the ownership structure of state enterprises on management, governance, innovation, and performance relative to other types of firms in China.

This title provides researchers, students, and policymakers interested in the Chinese economy with in depth information and analysis on key issues related to the reform of state-owned enterprises.

Global Change and East Asian Policy Initiatives
Edited by Shahid Yusuf , M. Anjum Altaf , Kaoru Nabeshima

Global Change and East Asian Policy Initiatives Book Cover

Published July 2004

Many East Asian economies have grown briskly in the past few years. However, future development will depend on the quality and timeliness of regional and national policy actions. The policy agenda must address the problems that buffeted the region in the late 1990s?associated with the weakness of domestic institutions and policies in the context of globalization. These problems include financial shocks, rapid shifts in the competitiveness of major exports, changes in international production networking, and significant reconfiguration in the geographical composition of production systems that had provided the foundation for growth.

Sustaining dynamism in East Asia requires policy initiatives that contain the risks from shocks and manage the ongoing shifts and changes in ways that enhance both the competitiveness of firms and the stability of the economies. Global Change and East Asian Policy Initiatives provides specific policy responses that could be employed to navigate successfully through periods of economic, political, and technological turbulence.

The book is a collection of studies by leading experts in such fields as corporate and political governance, economic policy, globalization, higher education, legal reform, regional integration, and social protection. The studies reflect the most current thinking and research on global, regional, and national policies of relevance to East Asian economies. It is an important resource for policymakers, researchers and students interested in East Asia.

Global Production Networking and Technological Change in East Asia
Edited by Shahid Yusuf , M. Anjum Altaf , Kaoru Nabeshima
Published July 2004

In the coming decades, East Asian economies must face the challenges of an Global Production Networking and Technological Change in East Asia Book Cover

Global Production Networking and Technological Change in East Asia Book Cover

increasingly globalized marketplace. This book explores the changing parameters of competition in East Asia, and argues that success ultimately will depend on the ability of the region's firms to harness the potential of global production networks and to build their own innovative capability. Presenting the latest findings on global production networks and the evolution of technological capabilities, it provides researchers, students, and policymakers with in-depth information and analysis on key issues related to growth and development in East Asia.

East Asian firms must not only achieve greater efficiency but also become more innovative, offering differentiated products in order to vie with other first-tier suppliers of multinational corporations. These firms will also need to develop a technological edge if they are to compete with corporations from the leading OECD countries and form their own global production networks. Global Production Networking and Technological Change in East Asia argues that a development strategy linked to technological advance will be necessary to foster the growth of innovative national firms that can remain competitive in global markets.

Innovative East Asia: The Future of Growth
By Shahid Yusuf
Published January 2003

The salience of East Asia in the global economy is now unquestionable, and with a population of nearly 1.9 billion, its expanding markets will strongly influence the tempo of international trade and the growth of global incomes. However, while the potential of East Asian economies has been amply demonstrated, their future performance is by no means assured.

The crisis of 1997, the uneven recovery, the intensifying trade competition, and the rapidity of technological change, call for initiatives by governments and by firms on several fronts. East Asia needs to sustain its hard-earned stability by recalibrating its fiscal and exchange rate policies, by strengthening social safety nets and governance, and by invigorating financial, regulatory, and legal institutions. Yet these are only preconditions; future economic performance will depend on linking growth to productivity.

The major contribution of Innovative East Asia: The Future of Growth is that it identifies and analyzes the ingredients of an innovative economy, discusses how these can be meshed together by government policy and market initiatives, and demonstrates how stability can be a stepping stone to innovation-driven growth.

Can East Asia Compete? Innovation for Global Markets
By Simon J. Evenett , Shahid Yusuf
Published September 2002

Can East Asia Compete? looks at whether or not East Asia can restore its near magical performance, or is its competitive strength beginning to wane. This volume argues that East Asian countries have far from exhausted their growth potential. However, future competitiveness will depend on much greater innovative capability in manufacturing and services, innovativeness that is grounded in stronger institutions, improved macroeconomic policies, and closer regional coordination. Can East Asia Compete? clearly summarizes the issues currently being debated and provides guidance to East Asian economies on how to deal with the policy concerns that lie ahead.

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