This book examines five countries in South East Asia that are instructive case studies of how the region has had to negotiate pathways of development beyond crises and traps. At two ends of just one decade, 1997-2007, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam all had to weather the shocks of an East Asian financial crisis and a global financial crisis. Some economies might have buckled completely under those shocks and been condemned to long-term stagnation. Yet these five economies, part of the larger Asian region, emerged with continued if slower economic growth. An important theme of this book is that their resilience has been partly derived from the pursuit of growth and competitiveness along less known or recommended pathways. The chapters of this book take a novel approach to South East Asia's search for growth and improvement. They do not begin by evaluating how far macro-level performances would take a particular country towards high-income status. Instead they provide original insights into actual cases of intermediate ways of achieving growth, upgrading and income improvement in non-privileged sectors. Such cases may hold more relevant lessons for the majority of developing countries than the experiences of highly developed economies.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This volume analyzes the economic, social, and political challenges that emerging states confront today. Notwithstanding the growing importance of the 'emerging states' in global affairs and governance, many problems requiring immediate solutions have emerged at home largely as a consequence of the rapid economic development and associated sociopolitical changes. The middle-income trap is a major economic challenge faced by emerging states. This volume regards interest coordination for technological upgrading as crucial to avoid the trap and examines how various emerging states are grappling with this challenge by fostering public-private cooperation, voluntary associations of market players, and/or social networks. Social disparity is another serious problem. It is deeply rooted in history in the emerging states such as South Africa and many Latin American countries. However, income distribution is recently deteriorating even in East Asia that was once praised for its high economic growth with equity. Increasing pressure for political opening is another challenge for emerging states. This volume argues that the economic, social, and political problems are interwoven in the sense that the emerging states need to build political consensus in order to tackle the economic and social difficulties. Democratic institutions have not always been successful in this respect.

Two Crises, Different Outcomes examines East Asian policy reactions to the two major crises of the last fifteen years: the global financial crisis of 2008 9 and the Asian financial crisis of 1997 98. The calamity of the late 1990s saw a massive meltdown concentrated in East Asia. In stark contrast, East Asia avoided the worst effects of the Lehman Brothers collapse, incurring relatively little damage when compared to the financial devastation unleashed on North America and Europe. Much had changed across the intervening decade, not least that China rather than Japan had become the locomotive of regional growth, and that the East Asian economies had taken numerous steps to buffer their financial structures and regulatory regimes. This time, Asia avoided disaster; it bounced back quickly after the initial hit and has been growing in a resilient fashion ever since.

The authors of this book explain how the earlier financial crisis affected Asian economies, why government reactions differed so widely during that crisis, and how Asian economies weathered the Great Recession. Drawing on a mixture of single-country expertise and comparative analysis, they conclude by assessing the long-term prospects that Asian countries will continue their recent success.

Contributors: Muhamad Chatib Basri, Minister of Finance of the Republic of Indonesia and Professor of Economics at the University of Indonesia; Yun-han Chu, Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica; Richard Doner, Emory University; Barry Naughton, University of California, San Diego; Yasunobu Okabe, Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute; T. J. Pempel, University of California, Berkeley; Tom Pepinsky, Cornell University; Keiichi Tsunekawa, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo"

Two Crises, Different Outcomes examines East Asian policy reactions to the two major crises of the last fifteen years: the global financial crisis of 2008 9 and the Asian financial crisis of 1997 98. The calamity of the late 1990s saw a massive meltdown concentrated in East Asia. In stark contrast, East Asia avoided the worst effects of the Lehman Brothers collapse, incurring relatively little damage when compared to the financial devastation unleashed on North America and Europe. Much had changed across the intervening decade, not least that China rather than Japan had become the locomotive of regional growth, and that the East Asian economies had taken numerous steps to buffer their financial structures and regulatory regimes. This time, Asia avoided disaster; it bounced back quickly after the initial hit and has been growing in a resilient fashion ever since.

The authors of this book explain how the earlier financial crisis affected Asian economies, why government reactions differed so widely during that crisis, and how Asian economies weathered the Great Recession. Drawing on a mixture of single-country expertise and comparative analysis, they conclude by assessing the long-term prospects that Asian countries will continue their recent success.

Contributors: Muhamad Chatib Basri, Minister of Finance of the Republic of Indonesia and Professor of Economics at the University of Indonesia; Yun-han Chu, Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica; Richard Doner, Emory University; Barry Naughton, University of California, San Diego; Yasunobu Okabe, Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute; T. J. Pempel, University of California, Berkeley; Tom Pepinsky, Cornell University; Keiichi Tsunekawa, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo"