Introduction Productivity, Efficiency, and Economic Growth in the Asia-Pacific Region

Productivity growth enables an individual firm to raise profit and market share at the micro level, and it helps a country to counteract inflation, create jobs, and to force the necessary industrial restructuring at the macro level. There is widespread consensus among academic researchers in the field of growth theory, policy makers, and/or businessmen that productivity growth is indispensable to sustainable economic growth.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to improve the productivity, since the ways and means critically depend upon the context and the condition under which firms operate. For example, the strategy for productivity growth in 2000s should be different from that in 1990s, since the parameters forming the economic condition are different and changing. Cross-sectionally, the strategy for automobile industry should not be the same as that for financial institutions, mainly because the production process and industry structure are all different from each other. Thus, the decision maker who is in charge of productivity growth should learn the characteristics of the context, and track down the relevant studies and successful policies that tackle similar sector and/or period.