Toothless Tigers? East Asian economic growth from 1960 to 1990

The author studies East Asian economic performance relative to the experience of a sample of rich, industrialized countries. On combining the coefficients from an augmented Solow model of growth for a sample of industrialized countries with the actual levels of factor accumulation in East Asia, no evidence is found that the region as a whole is over-achieving. Only Hong Kong and Taiwan can be characterized as over-achievers. Further, Indonesia and Thailand (when income growth is measured in per-worker terms) are actually significant under-achievers, growing slower than forecasted growth in every period.