MODERN ASIAN ECONOMIES   by Yonosuke Hara March 2001, 210 x 148 mm, 246 pp., 2,200- In the early 1990s, the world praised the “East Asian Miracle,” but at the outset of economic crisis suddenly began criticizing “crony-capitalism,” even though nothing had changed in those systems that seemed so successful at first. Why did East Asia achieve high economic growth only to face such crisis? This book begins to answer the above question by presenting a theoretical framework for viewing Asian economies within the wider perspective of the economics of globalization and regionalism. Market transactions often transcend regional boundaries; meanwhile economic institutions that allocate labor and land tend to evolve along a history-dependent path. This analysis comprises the basic hypothesis underlying the book. The author discusses the long-term development paths of Asia by focusing on each region's adaptive process to global capitalism. Why have China and India, the two core civilizations in Asia, “stagnated” during the past two centuries? The author states that the economic institutions suitable for premodern development became the bottle neck to “modern” growth (chap. 3). He describes the development path of the peripheral civilizations such as Southeast Asia, and discovers that the rather more flexible institutions there as compared to those in China and India provided the basic conditions for the high rate of modern growth in this region (chap. 4). The next three chapters describe the various important issues related to modern economic growth such as sources of growth (chap. 5), patterns of industrialization (chap.6) and rural development (chap.8). Chapter 6 particularly highlights the long-term waves or cycles of world capitalism and its impacts on Asia. The following two chapters focus on the various limits involved in the globalization of the market economy. For example, the market economy itself is not sufficiently powerful to reduce poverty (chap.8) and at the same time preserve the environment (chap.9). Furthermore, Chapter 9 highlights the destructive power of the global financial market on “developing countries”by analyzing the financial crisis in East Asia. The closing chapter tries to identify the basic conditions for the coexistence of different economic systems in the world economy, and also desirable regional cooperation schemes in Asia. Contents Preface Chapter 1: An Approach to Asian economies: Economics of globalization and regionalism Chapter 2: History of Asian Economies: Maritime Asia Chapter 3: Economies of Core Civilizations: Continental Asia Chapter 4: Economies of Peripheral Civilizations: “Outside” civilization and the “Inside” world Chapter 5: Patterns and Sources of Economic Growth: From the Perspective of Developing Economies Chapter 6: Path to Industrialization: The long-term wave of the world economy Chapter 7: Agricultural and Rural Development: The uniqueness of indigenous society Chapter 8: Poverty and Social Structure: The limits of the market economy Chapter 9: Economic crisis and Environmental destruction: The limits of capitalism Chapter 10: Asian Economies at the turn of the Millenium: Conditions for coexistence among different regions About the Author Yonosuke Hara is Professor of Asian Economy at The Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo. His main research area is economic development in Southeast Asian countries. He received his Bachelor's degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Tokyo in 1967 and his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the Graduate School in 1976. He joined The Institute of Oriental Culture as Research Associate in 1972, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1979, and has served as Professor since 1988. During 1975-77, he served as an expert for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, located in Bangkok. He has been Director of the Institute since 1998. Professor Hara is the author of several books and numerous articles, including: Area Economics (NTT publishers,1999, 247pp.); Asian Dynamism (NTT publishers, 1996, 243pp.); Development Economics (Iwanami Shoten, 1996, 218pp.) and Economic Development in Southeast Asia (Institute of Oriental Culture, 1994, 464pp.).