Innovation and Structural Transformation in Asia

This book explores recent drivers of Asia’s growth and economic development. The analysis is based on a database created by the authors. It covers a large number of economies, including 39 from Asia for the period 1990-2020.

The database and the analysis in the book use novel indicators of development. It is structured along four areas: productivity and structural change, global value chains (GVCs), economic complexity, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). The book offers insights into current economic performance and future prospects. It shows great heterogeneity across the region, highlighting a range of development experiences. Each chapter contains an accessible methodological section of the concepts used, explaining the construction of indicators and how they should be interpreted.

The book will interest scholars of Asian economics, structural transformation, productivity, GVCs, complexity, and 4IR studies. The publicly available database will also appeal to policymakers and researchers interested in data analysis.

Jesus Felipe is Distinguished Professor of Economics at De La Salle University (The Philippines). His research on growth and structural transformation has been published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, and World Development.

Neil Foster-McGregor is Senior Economist at the Asian Development Bank. His research on growth, trade, and structural transformation has been published in Industrial and Corporate Change, Research Policy, Structural Change and Economic, and World Development.

Önder Nomaler is a Senior Researcher at UNU-MERIT (The Netherlands). His research on evolutionary economics has been published in Research Policy, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Economics of Innovation and New Technologies, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, and the Journal of Economic Geography.

Bart Verspagen is Professor of the Macroeconomics of Innovation and New Technology at Maastricht University (The Netherlands). He has published extensively in the field of innovation research, and is editor of Journal of Evolutionary Economics. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo.