Rethinking the East Asian Miracle (World Bank Publication)

Rating:
Summary: sequels seldom top the original
Review: There is a reason why people remember those James Bond movies with Sean Connery and forget the ones with Roger Moore. Follow-up to the World Bank's "East Asian Miracle" study, "Rethinking the East Asian Miracle" is an uneven conference volume. Despite its publication in 2001, none of the papers deal centrally with the Asian financial crisis. In several instances (Ito's overview, McKinnon on international monetary arrangement, Urata on FDI), authors simply go through the motions, rehashing their well-known positions on issues without adding any new insight. Woo on corporate governance is long on jargon and short on substance. The only paper that really presents new results is Lawrence and Weinstein on Japanese industrial policy, though Pack's dissection of the growth accounting debate as it relates to Asia is very informative. Some of the other papers (Okazaki on Japanese industrial policy, Perkins on corruption in China and Vietnam, Jomo on SE Asian capitalism) while not presenting new research per se, at least offer some interesting ideas.