Based on the variable rate of gross domestic product per capita growth and its sources, this paper first identifies five phases of economic development that are common to China, Japan, and Korea: M (Malthusian), G (government-led), K (à la Kuznets), H (human capital based) and PD (post...

Based on the variable rate of gross domestic product per capita growth and its sources, this paper first identifies five phases of economic development that are common to China, Japan, and Korea: M (Malthusian), G (government-led), K (à la Kuznets), H (human capital based) and PD (post...

China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

This essay first provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of the East Asian economies as a peasant-based economy in...

Recent scholarship has revised the once pessimistic view of the Chinese economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but controversy surrounds the distribution effects of economic growth. Did livelihoods improve? Who benefited from the growth? Which regions were better off? Past studies...

For over a decade, the economy of Hong Kong has been ranked the freest economy by both the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. and the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada. Rankings of economic freedom tend to make comparisons on the performance of economic freedom among the various world...

The September 11 terrorist attacks ignited global interest in the Middle East. Observers in the region and abroad were quick to highlight the development "deficits" in Middle Eastern countries which have been linked to everything from structural economic imbalances to deficient political...

We study the implications of two historical institutions, direct British rule, and the heterogeneous land tenure institutions implemented by the British, on disparity in present day development using district level data from India. Using nightlights per capita as a proxy for district level per...

We study the implications of two historical institutions, direct British rule, and the heterogeneous land tenure institutions implemented by the British, on disparity in present day development using district level data from India. Using nightlights per capita as a proxy for district level per...

Theoretical and empirical evidence on the relationship between institutions and economic prosperity remains ambiguous, even though it has been part of scholarly discourse for decades. The present study adds to this discussion by introducing a bundled approach for measuring institutions. This...