Investment in a broad array of intangible capital - R&D, organizational capital, worker training, and brand equity - has occurred in many of the most advanced world economies and has been found to be an important source of economic growth. This evidence suggests that intangible capital formation may play an important role in China's reform-driven transformation to a more market-oriented open economy. Though the literature on intangible capital is expanding, there has as yet been no general assessment of its role in China's rapid economic growth. This paper seeks to fill this gap by estimating how much intangible investment has taken place there over the last two decades. The importance of this capital as a driver of China's recent growth is then assessed using a growth accounting framework, and the results compared to similar findings for the U.S., Japan, the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, as well as Japan during its high growth period. The paper also looks beyond the growth accounting framework to the role of saving rates and long-run convergence in shaping longer-term growth prospects. It also focuses on the problem of accurate economic measurement in an economy undergoing rapid transformation.

Despite increasing research efforts, there is still much confusion regarding the nature and contribution of the most intangible forms of capital. This book develops a comprehensive and unifying conception of intangible capital in order to understand its role with respect to economic growth, well-being, and rationality. As the book illustrates, utilizing the intangible capital concept enables many new and important economic insights. Intangible capital is defined to include standard human capital, noncognitive human capital (including personal capital), social capital, and other intangible manifestations of human capacity. Understanding intangible capital is a key to realizing the full human potential of our economic systems. Explaining how the main components of intangible capital contribute to economic growth, this book will be of great interest to social scientists in the fields of heterodox, behavioural and social economics, social capital, HRM, and economic and organizational change. It will also be of considerable value to government policymakers and business managers interested in the role and implications of intangible capital and intangible assets for productivity, growth and the performance of firms. Philosophers and psychologists, among others, should find the chapters dealing with intangible capital in relation to well-being and rationality of particular interest.

The East Asian countries have been relatively more advanced than other developing countries in the field of human capital development. Even in the 1960s they managed to attain higher levels of human capital compared with other low- and middle-level economies in the developing world. This volume examines the role of human capital formation in the rapid growth of the East Asian economies. Apart from the formal education variable, other factors such as better health care of the labour force, nutritional status of the population, and on-the-job training are important concerns that were not given sufficient attention in the 1993 World Bank study The East Asian Miracle. This present volume offers many insights of interest to policy-makers and specialists with regard to developing (and transitional) economies.

East Asia's rapid economic growth and the crisis of 1997 have caught the world's attention. As the Asian miracle has turned to meltdown, the critical question has become whether growth will resume. Based on research and conferences at ICSEAD in Kitakyushu, Japan, this book brings together the work of Asian economic development experts. It considers the forces behind the East Asian growth miracle, the process of growth, the effect of saving, and the effect of foreign direct investment and multinationals. Taking an optimistic view, the authors conclude that rapid growth may resume in East Asia once the crisis has been resolved. The authors argue that a growth process links East Asian countries to each other and to the industrial world, and that growth reflects a process that combines capital formation and technical and institutional change. The 1997 crisis grew out of excessively rapid boom and must be handled before growth will resume. But, the authors conclude, once the crisis has been resolved, the linked process of growth supported by appropriate policies, high levels of savings and investment, and foreign investment will allow growth to resume, although perhaps with a different geographic center of gravity.

Despite the diversity in income levels, languages, culture, resource endowments, and political systems, the countries of East Asia are more integrated now than they have ever been. Goods, money, and ideas are being traded across the region. East Asia is redefining itself from a collection of disparate nations that looked mainly to markets in the west, to a more self-reliant, innovative, and networked region. Countries in this region are strengthening ties with each other and seeking more strategic partnerships with the rest of the world. 'East Asian Visions' is a collection of essays that convey, firsthand, how some of the most influential thinkers in East Asia view these challenges. The writers are eminent policy makers, statesmen, and scholars. They write about how competition with the west has bred success; how crises in the region have provoked introspection; and how the rise of China is catalyzing change.