How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World's Most Dynamic Region

O livro aborda as razões pelas quais os diversos países asiáticos tiveram resultados diferentes na corrida na direção ao desenvolvimento econômico e social. A análise é bem detalhada, mas em linhas gerais as diferenças de resultado podem ser atribuídas à (1) efetiva reforma fundiária, privilegiando a agricultura de pequena escala e mais intensiva em mão-de-obra, (2) redistribuição de riqueza e melhoria da arrecadação derivadas da reforma fundiária, (3) política industrial para forçar os industrialistas a focarem na exportação, e (4) investimento em educação.

The book delivers as promised. There's a lot of factual information and historical explanations on the success or failures of different areas of Asia.If you get this book, you'll be thoroughly educated.

I was a late reader of this excellent book, which provides a clear overview of what worked (and what dit not) in Asian national development strategies. Some critics say that the author takes in little consideration topics such as institutional theory, which, on the opposite, I consider a positive feature of the book: so much has been written about the role of institutions in shaping development paths that it would have been redundant to include this point of view in the book.

Really enjoyed reading this book and opened my eyes on the various different governmental policy successes and failures that shaped how Asian countries are now like today. Particularly liked how the author used snippets of his trips to some of these places, it really helped visualize what he is describing. Definitely a must read if you want to learn and understand why countries such as South Korea, Japan and China developed so successfully to where they are now today, but countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand really lagged behind and stalled since the end of WW2.

How Asia Works by Joe Studwell is an account of economic developement and history in Asia. It focuses on a several key economies including Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and finally to China. It discusses economic history and the sequencing of events that led to the success and failurs of different countries in Asia. The author draws conclusions about the right ingredients for economic growth in the modern era given the various lessons one can learn from Asian examples. The author breaks the book into 4 categories- Land, Manufacturing, Finance and finally China.The author starts by discussing Land and agriculture. He starts out by making the observation that the highest efficiency in produce per square meter for agriculture occurs through home farming and that economies of scale might exist from a cost perspective given the cost of labour but does not mean that aggregate produce would be highest if we all farmed. He then discusses how farming in history has been dominated by landlords and the business of farming within a landlord system by rent seeking behaviour that does not sufficiently invest in land improvement. He finally concludes that when human capital is cheap gaining productivity by eradicating rents and equalizing ownership of farm land increases productivity and moves people up the income curve allowing for the first stage of economic growth. Studwell then goes on to discuss how this general idea was understood and implemented in Japan, Korean and Taiwan and in particular how their experiences led to yield improvements. It also discusses how these principles were not followed in Philippines and other parts of south east asia and how the differences in land policy were the first fundamental hurdle for economic developement to take off.The author then moves on to manufacturing and discusses the concept of infant industries. He discusses the origin of the idea and how creating barriers to entry was understood to be a necessary part of fostering domestic industry. The need to create a system of carrots for successful ventures and sticks to punish failures was shown to be an integral part of successful development policy and the differences between Korean and Malaysia is used as an example to show how competition was needed to keep entrepreneurs more honest. Focusing on exports is shown to be a key to forcing companies up technology curves and putting them in a competetive landscape to perfect the growth process and that preferential credit was a means to facilitate projects like this. Having industrial policy is shown to be more effective when looking at the differences between Korean and Taiwan as an example.The author then goes on to finance. Having finance controlled by industrial policy rather than nepotistic interests is quite obviously shown to have major impacts on the quality of investment. Southeast asia and crony capitalism are given as examples of how credit was funelled into asset gathering instead of broadening productive capacities. The differences in experience between Indonesia and Korea are given as examples to think about. The liberalization of finance is also discussed and the merits of liberal capital flows vs closed capital accounts are detailed and the author argues that in developement having control over the flow of capital in and out of the country can have massive benefits especially when those flows are hot money.The author finally discusses China and where it fits in. Its similarity on industrial policy to north asia and taiwan is shown and its history of encouraging state upstream industries to continue to compete and stay competitive is discussed. The author also discusses the failure to reform the agricultural side of the economy and how that is a long run problem that needs to be solved for China to be able to escape the middle income trap. The limits of supporting upstream and midstream activities is discussed and the need for capital allocation to start flowing towards creating consumer brands is considered. The author covers the successful parts of China's growth model as well as the limits of it and considers other asian countries lessons to be heeded.This is a combination of history and economic policy lessons as a function of that history. It is coherent, interesting and insightful. One finishes it believing that free market capitalism too is dependent on institutional arrangement and market structure. The need to adapt developement strategy to the stage of economic developement is currently in is given to be of critical importance. This reads well and illuminates developent in Asia to the reader. It contains anecdotal stories and economic interpretation. It caters to a wide audience and can be appreciated on many levels.