Asian NIEs and the Global Economy: Industrial Restructuring and Corporate Strategy in the 1990s.

• Author: Gapinski, James H.

Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan are alternatively known as the Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs), the Dragons, or the East Asian Tigers. They are aptly named because, as their appellations combine to suggest, they have been ferocious in growth. During the decade of the 1960s, their rate of labor productivity growth averaged 6.3 percent and continued at 6.0 percent and 5.4 percent into the decades of the 1970s and 1980s respectively. Those rates far outdistanced the ones for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose member countries mustered percentages of 4.2, 2.1, and 1.7 sequentially over the three decades. In keeping with such discrepant growth experiences, the productivity level of the Tigers has been catching up to the level of the OECD; that is, the Tigers have been converging to the leading countries in standard neoclassical fashion. Indeed, they represent a rather impressive, if not miraculous, success story told by various narrators including the present reviewer [1].

The volume edited by Clark and Kim has a different story to tell. The Tigers are in trouble. Running along the path of convergence, they have suffered an erosion of competitive advantage because their labor-intensive industries in garments, electronics, and footwear have been plagued by worsening labor shortages and rising labor costs inter alia. Presently the Tigers find themselves being squeezed from above and below [pp. 6, 219, 252]. Pressure from above involves the political economy of a world trade framework that is strongly influenced by multinational firms. Pressure from below revolves around competition from low-cost nations like China - the Panda - and the Southeast Asian Lions of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The moral of the microeconomic tale [pp. 52, 277] by Clark, Kim, and their colleagues is that firms must restructure their operations if the Tigers are to break the grip of the vice and to revitalize their economic performance.

Anchored by a corporate survey from the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, the book has ten chapters segmented into three parts. In addition, it offers an appendix that reproduces the survey instrument, it brings all references together in a single section, and it includes author and subject indices along with a list of abbreviations. Biographical sketches of the nine contributors are provided as well. The diverse orientations of these scholars seems to be fitting because the volume is obviously aimed at a diverse and broad audience. Accordingly, it is written in an easy-to-read style, and it is light - perhaps too light - on rigor.

Part I...