Where do the Asian tiger economies go from here?

EVEN IN THEIR prime, the tigers had their detractors. Twenty-five years ago this month, Paul Krugman, an economist, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, an American policy journal, entitled “The Myth of Asia’s Miracle”. He argued that Asia’s seemingly dynamic economies displayed, on closer inspection, “startlingly little evidence of improvements in efficiency”. Their growth relied instead on rapidly increasing inputs of labour, capital and so on. It was a miracle based on “perspiration” not “inspiration”. Singapore, in particular, “grew through a mobilisation of resources that would have done Stalin proud”, Mr Krugman wrote.