The paper argues that Thailand's economic and social development from the late 19th century to the early 21st century presents a puzzle. For much of the period from 1870 to 1940, the country's economic growth was slow, and the economy remained agricultural, with little diversification into...

To investigate the causes of Korea’s growth slowdown over the past thirty years, we estimate the contributions of major developmental factors, including i) demographic factors (changes in population growth and workforce age due to the demographic transition), ii) quality-of-life-related choice...

In this paper, I analyze the causes of the prolonged slowdown of the Japanese economy in the 1990s and find that the stagnation of investment, especially private fixed investment, was the primary culprit. I then investigate the causes of the stagnation of household consumption during the 1990s...

This paper summarizes the main characteristics of the two major Chinese growth strategies since 1978, namely the Deng strategy (named after Deng Xiaoping) between 1978 and 2011 and the Xi strategy (named after Xi Jinping) since 2012/13. After a brief description of both strategies, I analyze in...

In the last 30 years, China has achieved high economic growth and successfully transformed its economy from a planned economy to a market-based system. The country, to a large extent, has attained success through the recommendations proposed by standard economic theory. However, the role of...

After becoming independent in 1991, the five Central Asian countries pursued differing transition paths from the defunct central planning. This paper analyses the connection between economic policies and performance during the 1990s and 2000s. Performance over the two decades has been determined...

Uzbekistan in recent 10 years is an extremely successful economy – high growth (8%), low domestic and international debt, undervalued exchange rate, relatively even distribution of income, creation from scratch competitive export oriented auto industry. It is important though to avoid...

The Thai economy has been underperformed during the last decade. The average annual GDP growth during 2007-2016 was merely 3.2 percent. Not only was this growth rate one of the lowest among all of the economies in Southeast Asia, it was also far below what Thailand experienced during the...