Excelente artículo de O, Canuto. Presenta una versión más ajustada a la realidad.
The East
Asian Miracle 2.0
Author:
Otaviano Canuto · November 26th, 2012 ·
Almost 20
years ago, the World Bank released a groundbreaking report – The East Asian
Miracle – that called worldwide attention to the economic success of eight
economies in the region, leading to a discussion on the extent to which
policies followed by them could be replicated. In a recent Economic Premise –
“Avoiding Middle-Income Growth Traps” – Pierre-Richard Agénor, Michael Jelenic
and I suggest that the region can now provide a new round of lessons:
“The
features of East Asia’s experience in
transitioning from middle- to high-income status provide important lessons for
other countries that are attempting to follow suit.”
In 2008, of
the 101 economies classified in 1960 by the World Bank as middle-income, only
13 had moved up the ladder to the high-income group. Five of them – Ireland,
Portugal, Spain, Greece and Puerto Rico – constitute a special case, with their
ascent inextricably associated to their absorption by existing high-income
country spaces. Equatorial
Guinea also has the singular experience of a
very small country that is extremely well endowed with natural resources. But
it is with the five East Asian economies in that select group – Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore,
Hong Kong SAR (China) and Taiwan (China) – where a reference of broader reach
can be found for autonomous efforts to transit steadily from the bottom of the
income ladder to the top. Meanwhile, most other economies already at
middle-income levels in 1960 seem to have been caught in some sort of
“middle-income trap.”
The
evolution from low- to middle-income levels has been reasonably similar
wherever it has happened. Typically, a large pool of unskilled labor is
transferred from subsistence-level occupations to more modern activities that
do not demand much upgrading of these workers’ skills, but nonetheless employ
higher levels of capital and embedded technology. Such technology is available
from more-advanced countries and is often easy to adjust to local
circumstances. The effect of the labor transfer is an extraordinary increase of
GDP values beyond what could be explained by the augmented use of labor,
capital and other physical factors of production.
This growth
pattern tends to eventually slow down, either when the pool of transferable
unskilled labor is exhausted or if the expansion of labor-absorbing modern
activities peaks before the pool is empty. Beyond that point, growth toward
high-income levels will require an increasing share of the population occupied
in activities that are more technologically sophisticated, human capital-based,
and intensive in design and organizational capabilities.
As my
colleagues and I emphasize in our note, that new stage differs from the
previous one in that a local and idiosyncratic process of skill acquisition is
essential. It no longer suffices to transfer and adapt technology blueprints
and organizational capabilities from abroad. Education of the labor force and access
to advanced infrastructure – which facilitate the circulation of ideas and
promote knowledge networks – are obvious requisites. However, government
efforts to provide them will not get a country very far if they are not
accompanied by institutions that reward innovations in products and processes
and that allow complex chains of low-cost market transactions. Local people’s
investment in innovative skill acquisition and organizational capacity building
only materializes if appropriable private returns are commensurate.
The five
East Asian cases exhibit those features. As we illustrate in the note, they all
have succeeded in developing advanced infrastructure networks, particularly in
the form of high-speed communications and broadband technology. Private-sector
returns derived from successful innovative efforts have also been a major
factor in facilitating home-grown innovation. Furthermore, flexible labor
markets and trade exposure allowed for the reallocation of labor across sectors
and sped the transition toward innovative occupations.
Similar
features can also be found in Israel
and Mauritius,
the two heretofore unmentioned members of the group of 13 that have managed to
ascend to high-income status. Before you say that most of those successful cases
are small economies, recall that this is not the case with Japan and the Republic of Korea.
The lessons learnt have no reason to be deemed country-size dependent.
A case in
point is Brazil,
a large middle-income country whose current average income reflects a
combination of some high income-level activities (aircraft industry, deep-sea
oil-drilling capabilities, technology-intensive agriculture etc.), a rich
natural-resource basis, a precarious basic infrastructure, and a large pool of
unskilled-labor occupations. While improvements on the latter two features
provide opportunities for income growth, moving up toward average high-income
levels will depend on widening the local creation of innovative and
organizational capabilities. For that to happen as it did in East
Asia, access to advanced infrastructure will need to significantly
improve and a more transaction-friendly institutional basis will have to be in
place.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario