This is the main volume in a series of publications based on a study cosponsored by the government of Japan and the World Bank to examine the future sources of economic growth in East Asia. The study was initiated in 2000 with the objective of identifying the most promising path to development...

Sources of growth in East Asia have been a controversial subject in the literature. This necessitates more empirical studies to see whether there is more convergence to a particular view of the sources of growth. This study provides a comprehensive examination of sources of growth that allows...

Except for the Philippines between 1896 and 1939, Southeast Asia was never part of the century-long East Asian industrial catching up until after World War II. Before the 1950s, Southeast Asian manufacturing hardly grew at all: while commodity export processing did grow fast, import-competing...

We set up an endogenous growth model in which the efficiency of both capital and fossil energy can be improved, whereas the efficiency of one alternative energy source is limited. With capital and energy as complements, there exist two steady states: one stagnant where energy is fully derived...

Does the concept of General Purpose Technologies help explain periods of faster and slower productivity advance in economies? The paper develops a new comparative data set on the usage of electricity in the manufacturing sectors of the USA, Britain, France, Germany and Japan and proceeds to...