Economic growth in Asia: Determinants and prospects

Abstract

Using a growth accounting framework, we find that developing Asia grew rapidly over the past three decades mainly due to robust growth in capital accumulation. The contributions of education and total factor productivity in the region's past economic growth remain relatively limited. We also make long-run growth projections for developing Asia by combining the growth accounting framework with growth regression approach. Our baseline projections based on the model of conditional convergence show that the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates of the 12 developing Asian economies covered by this paper will be consistently lower for the next two decades than their historical performance. However, policy reforms in education, property rights, and research and development can substantially raise GDP growth in the region and partly offset the slowdown in growth caused by the convergence phenomenon. Even under the baseline scenario, the region's share in the world economy will increase from the current 34 percent in 2009 to close to a half in 2030. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.