Inflation in East Asia: An Overview

This volume focuses on eight Asian developing countries: the five nations (now six, with the addition of Brunei) of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, hereafter ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand), as well as Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. Along with Japan, these East Asian countries can be referred to as the ‘capitalist-roaders of Asia’, although classical laissez-faire policies are certainly not being followed by any of the countries mentioned (Hong Kong comes closest, though, of course, it really is not an independent country and may be a special case in other ways). The government has played a key role in both Taiwan’s and Korea’s growth path, as in Singapore, to a lesser extent. However, as a guarded generalization, all eight have more or less closely followed the ‘Japanese model’ of export-based growth, market-oriented resource allocation, and private property rights. They have not been tempted by the ‘Chinese model’ which in the past 30 years has emphasized self-sufficiency, centralized control of prices and quantities, and substantial limitations upon the accumulation of personally-owned assets.