The COVID-19 pandemic struck the global economy after a decade that featured a broad-based slowdown in productivity growth. Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers, and Policies presents the first comprehensive analysis of the evolution and drivers of productivity growth, examines the effects of COVID-19 on productivity, and discusses a wide range of policies needed to rekindle productivity growth. The book also provides a far-reaching data set of multiple measures of productivity for up to 164 advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies, and it introduces a new sectoral database of productivity. The World Bank has created an extraordinary book on productivity, covering a large group of countries and using a wide variety of data sources. There is an emphasis on emerging and developing economies, whereas the prior literature has concentrated on developed economies. The book seeks to understand growth patterns and quantify the role of (among other things) the reallocation of factors, technological change, and the impact of natural disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is must-reading for specialists in emerging economies but also provides deep insights for anyone interested in economic growth and productivity. Martin Neil Baily Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution Former Chair, U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers This is an important book at a critical time. As the book notes, global productivity growth had already been slowing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and collapses with the pandemic. If we want an effective recovery, we have to understand what was driving these long-run trends. The book presents a novel global approach to examining the levels, growth rates, and drivers of productivity growth. For anyone wanting to understand or influence productivity growth, this is an essential read. Nicholas Bloom William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, Stanford University The COVID-19 pandemic hit a global economy that was already struggling with an adverse pre-existing condition—slow productivity growth. This extraordinarily valuable and timely book brings considerable new evidence that shows the broad-based, long-standing nature of the slowdown. It is comprehensive, with an exceptional focus on emerging market and developing economies. Importantly, it shows how severe disasters (of which COVID-19 is just the latest) typically harm productivity. There are no silver bullets, but the book suggests sensible strategies to improve growth prospects. John Fernald Schroders Chaired Professor of European Competitiveness and Reform and Professor of Economics, INSEAD

Considering the examples of Australia and the Pacific Rim, Growth and Productivity in East Asia offers a contemporary explanation for national productivity that measures contributions not only from capital and labor, but also from economic activities and relevant changes in policy, education, and technology. Takatoshi Ito and Andrew K. Rose have organized a group of collaborators from several Asian countries, the United States, and other parts of the globe who ably balance both macroeconomic and microeconomic study with theoretical and empirical approaches. Growth and Productivity in East Asia gives special attention to the causes for the unusual success of Australia, one of the few nations to maintain unprecedented economic growth despite the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2001 global downturn. A new database comprising eighty-four Japanese sectors reveals new findings for the last thirty years of sectoral productivity and growth in Japan. Studies focusing on Indonesia, Taiwan, and Korea also consider productivity and its relationship to research and development, foreign ownership, and policy reform in such industries as manufacturing, automobile production, and information technology.

'. . . this voluminous book is well put together and clearly worth a read.' - Renuka Mahadevan, ASEAN Bulletin Following on from their previous book Economic Efficiency and Productivity Growth in the Asia-Pacific Region, the authors in this volume analyse the economic performance of many of the major economies in the Asia-Pacific region including Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China and Japan. They examine economic and productivity growth, competitiveness and efficiency developments in the region. An introductory essay by the editors surveys recent economic developments in the region whilst introducing and cohesively integrating the chapters that follow. The studies employ a variety of modern analytical constructs and empirical techniques of open economy growth accounting as well as the measurement of productivity change, technical change and economic efficiency. A number of the chapters examine the entire region while others focus exclusively on a nation or industry. Several chapters study the causes and consequences of the financial crises in the region in 1997 from a recent historical perspective.

Economic Development of Emerging East Asia presents economic studies of Taiwan and South Korea, compares them chiefly with Japan and the United States and finds that these East Asian countries are still in the process of emerging in the world economy. A timely quantitative and econometric analysis of the regional economies of emerging East Asia, the volume examines development indicators, effects of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, productivity growth, catching up and convergence of long run real GDP per capita growth, the time required for a country to catch up, colonialism and economic development in Taiwan and India. Arranged in increasing complexity of economic analyses, the chapters in this book provide a comprehensive understanding of emerging East Asian economies. In addition to serving as a handy reference for regional economists, policy analysts and researchers, Economic Development of Emerging East Asia can also be used as a textbook on economics and business.

One-quarter of the world’s school-age children live in East Asia and Pacific. During the past 50 years, some economies in the region have successfully transformed themselves by investing in the continuous upgrading of the knowledge, skills, and abilities of their workforce. Through policy foresight, they have produced graduates with new levels of knowledge and skills almost as fast as industries have increased their demand for skilled workers. Yet the success of these high-performing systems has not been replicated throughout the region. Tens of millions of students are in school but not learning, and as many as 60 percent of students remain in school systems that are struggling to escape from the global learning crisis or in systems where performance is likely poor. Many students in these systems fail to reach basic levels of proficiency in key subjects and are greatly disadvantaged because of it. Growing Smarter: Learning and Equitable Development in East Asia and Pacific focuses on the experiences of economies in the region that have been able to expand schooling and learning and showcases those that have managed to pursue successful education reforms at scale. By examining these experiences, the report provides both diagnoses and detailed recommendations for improvement not only for education systems within East Asia and Pacific but also for countries across the globe. In East Asia and Pacific, the impressive record of success in education in some low- and middle-income countries is proof of concept that schooling in resource-constrained contexts can lead to learning for all. This report identifies the policies and practices necessary to ensure that students learn and suggests how countries can improve learning outcomes.

After a half century of transformative economic progress that moved hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, countries in developing East Asia are facing an array of challenges to their future development. Slowed productivity growth, increased fragility of the global trading system, and rapid changes in technology are all threatening export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing—the region’s engine of growth. Significant global challenges—such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic—are exacerbating economic vulnerability. These developments raise questions about whether the region’s past model of development can continue to deliver rapid growth and poverty reduction. Against this background, The Innovation Imperative in Developing East Asia aims to deepen understanding of the role of innovation in future development. The report examines the state of innovation in the region and analyzes the main constraints that firms and countries face to innovating. It assesses current policies and institutions, and lays out an agenda for action to spur more innovation-led growth. A key finding of the report is that countries’ current innovation policies are not aligned with their capabilities and needs. Policies need to strengthen the capacity of firms to innovate and support technological diffusion rather than just invention. Policy makers also need to eliminate policy biases against innovation in services, a sector that is growing in economic importance. Moreover, countries need to strengthen key complementary factors for innovation, including firms’ managerial quality, workers’ skills, and finance for innovation. Countries in developing East Asia would also do well to deepen their tradition of international openness, which could foster openness in other parts of the world. Doing so would help sustain the flows of ideas, trade, investment, and people that facilitate the creation and diffusion of knowledge for innovation.

This study examines the nature of the growth process in the ASEAN countries, and particularly whether it has been generated primarily by more inputs or by productivity gains. It uses internationally comparable data and explores an alternative method for estimating the capital and labor factor shares. The results, contradicting some previous studies, indicate a very impressive growth rate of TFP in Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, a relatively strong rate for Indonesia, and a negative rate for the Philippines. This study argues that the results of previous studies were driven mainly by the fact that they relied on national accounts data for measures of various variables and, in particular, the factor income shares of capital and labor.