erms of industrialization in the ensuing three decades, only a seer would have chosen the initial East Asian "tigers" û Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.
These countries were bereft of natural resources and as of the early 1950s had difficulty providing the basic necessities for their populations. Nevertheless, in relatively short order, the first generation of Asian "tigers" created opportunities which led a second generation of rapidly industrializing Asian "cubs," consisting of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand to move ahead economically. Though they are often spoken of as a single group, the East Asian economies are actually quite diverse and each economy has pursued a diverse mix of policies with varying degrees of government intervention and external assistance (leipziger & Thomas, 1994).
At the start of the 1990s, the "East Asian Miracle" was in full flower. A little more than a decade later, several of the region's economies were struggling to regain their earlier growth patterns. According to Shahid Yusuf (2002, p. 6), there are several factors that fostered growth in this region, to wit:
"Much of the growth in the industrializing countries of East Asia is traceable to capital accumulation and the benefits accruing from a youthful, fast growing and increasingly educated workforceà. As one comes closer to the present, the contribution of total factor productivity (TFP) to growth has risen in the middle- and upper-income countries, although it is still below the average for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.... most researchers believe the growth rates reported for economies in the region--although doubts have been voiced regarding those of China -and broadly accept micro level evidence showing a continuous absorption of manufacturing technology, rising technical efficiency, and a resilient competitiveness extending from low- to middle-tech and now ...