East Asian Economic Development: Statism, Neoclassicism, or the Firm?

As a contribution to economic and corporate history and development economics this work examines the most rapid and sustained industrialisation and economic development phenomenon in history. This dramatic and extended period of economic growth has inspired a determined and erudite search for its mode and method. It has consumed numerous researchers; political-economists, economists and economic historians alike. Various schools of thought emerged over time and each has taken turns, competing to explain this most significant economic event - spanning the period from the end of WWII until the mid-1990s. Each of these approaches is central to the question of whether an East Asian model of economic development exists. The analysis of the relative value of the major perspectives in this book fundamentally departs from the common trend in economics literature to generally adopt one approach or another. As an analysis of the dynamic combination of, and interplay between, business organisation, politics and economics its lessons are relevant to all developing economies today.