Trade Patterns And Regimes In Asia And The Pacific PDF Download

This book is a collection of papers by various authors focusing on the economies of Pacific Asia. The papers were produced for a 1984 seminar sponsored by the NBER and the Malaysian Economic Association. The book is thorough, and the articles well written and reasonably connected with each other, which reflects very good editorial work. The volume assembles the established wisdom concerning a group of countries that have been extremely successful following rather unconventional strategies, blending for example export promotion with elements of a planned economy and therefore divorcing the conventional association between export promotion and liberal markets. There are two types of papers here: the first addresses more or less theoretical issues of trade and development with applications to countries of East and Southeast Asia. These deal inter alia with issues such as the "secret" behind the prosperity of the Gang of Four (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) as well as the meaning and success of export-oriented strategies, and more generally of trade patterns based on the theory of relative advantages in factor use (i.e., the international division of labor). The second type of papers are less theoretical, and refer to particular issues in particular countries. There are "case studies" of, for example, Singapore trade in manufactures and trade patterns in Taiwan and Thailand.