资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

This paper reviews what the profession has learnt during the last 25 years about East Asia’s growth using growth accounting exercises and estimations of production functions. The publication of Alwyn Young’s (1992, 1994, 1995) and Jong-Il Kim and Lawrence Lau’s (1994) studies, and Paul Krugman’s (1994) popularization of the “zero total factor productivity growth” thesis, led to a very important debate within the profession.

The paper demystifies this literature by pointing out a major methodological problem inherent in these approaches. To grasp this literature and the debates it engendered, it is necessary to understand how the notion of productivity and technical progress it refers to is calculated. We show that total factor productivity calculated with value data is not a measure of productivity. We conclude that the debate about the sources of growth in East Asia was much ado about nothing.