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Publications (27)
The transformation of Asia’s education and health systems over the last 50 years has been breathtaking and unprecedented in human history. There are some central features of this transformation that clearly stand out. Over the last 50 years, all Asian countries have been able to expand citizen...
Over the last 50 years, Asia has emerged as the most important laboratory for understanding the roots of state effectiveness and the consequences of different modes of state action for delivering enhanced wellbeing. While in the mid-twentieth century social science researchers were focused on...
– Experience over the last fifty years
Asia has achieved remarkable economic growth and seen hundreds of millions of citizens rise out of poverty since the mid-1960s. Constructing and analysing the factors behind continent’s poverty and inequality over the last fifty years helps gain important insights for further reducing global poverty...
One common characteristic of the fast-growing countries with good labour market outcomes — Korea, China, Vietnam — was at the beginning of their growth spurt their initially equal household income level, which was the result of renewed distribution of income. The most salient examples of more equal...
– Diversity in Development
In 1820, Asia accounted for two-thirds of world population and over half of world income. The subsequent decline of Asia was attributable to its integration with a world economy shaped by colonialism and driven by imperialism. By 1970, Asia was the poorest continent in the world, marginal except for...
When Gunnar Myrdal published his magnum opus, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, in 1968, he was deeply pessimistic about the development prospects in Asia. The fifty years since witnessed a remarkable economic transformation in Asia — even if it has been uneven across countries...
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Gunnar Myrdal published Asian Drama in 1968, a work which made important analytical contributions to our understanding of development but was deeply pessimistic about Asia’s future prospects. Since then, contrary to Myrdal’s expectations, Asia’s development has been remarkable, although...
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Inspired by Gunnar Myrdal’s core concepts discussed in his seminal work, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, published in 1968, this paper analyses the opening-up experiences of three Asian countries (China, India, and Malaysia) by triangulating between the following: (i) the...
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– The role of norms and organizational power
The role of institutions in Asian development has been intensely contested since Myrdal’s Asian Drama, with later contributions from institutional economics and developmental state theory. Despite much progress, the dominant approaches do not agree about the institutions that matter nor do they...
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– The dragon that rose from the ashes
This study takes as its starting point what Gunnar Myrdal had to say about Vietnam in the context of his seminal work, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, published in 1968. Myrdal pointed to the decisive nature of the Vietnamese people; and subsequent developments, which are...
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– A chapter in the Asian drama
This paper is a short history of the Indian economy since 1968. India today is a changed country from what it was half a century ago, when Myrdal published his Asian Drama. The stranglehold of low growth has been broken, its population below the poverty line has fallen markedly, and India has joined...
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– 1965-2014
This paper aims to depict the post-Second World War poverty and inequality trends in Asia, its sub-regions, and individual economies. Efforts are made to explain these trends and explore the interrelationship between growth, poverty, and inequality in Asia. Analytical results confirm significant...
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– Trends in industrialization and industrial policy experiences of developing Asia
Industrial transformation of Asia arguably constitutes the most surprising and dramatic change in the global economy in the last fifty years. This paper provides an outline of some of the most important trends of this development and analyses selected national industrial policies that promoted...
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Using a comparative frame that draws on the variation of developmental trajectories in Asia from Northeast Asia to China to Southeast Asia and to India, this paper explores the changing role of the state in these countries and the contributions that the analysis of the Asian state has made to...
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This paper reviews the main methodological innovations in Asian Drama. It considers whether Myrdal’s perspectives have been adopted by development analysts, and where fresh thinking is needed, particularly in the light of changes occurring in the half-century since he wrote Asian Drama. The paper...
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How have economic development, employment, and labour markets in Asian countries interacted since the publication of Myrdal’s Asian Drama? Myrdal rejected, the western approach to and definition of employment and emphasized the role of ‘informal’ employment, but he underestimated the effects of the...
Displaying 16 of 27 results