Southeast Asia beyond Crises and Traps

This book examines how Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam can provide instructive case studies of how Southeast Asia has negotiated pathways of development beyond crises and traps. At two ends of just one decade, 1997–2007, these five countries all  weathered the shocks of an East Asian financial crisis and a global financial crisis. Some economies might have buckled completely under those shocks and been condemned to long-term stagnation. Yet these economies emerged with continued if slower economic growth. 

An important theme of this book is that their resilience has been partly derived from the pursuit of growth and competitiveness along lesser known pathways. The chapters of this book take a novel approach to South East Asia’s search for growth and improvement. They provide original insights into actual cases of intermediate ways of achieving growth, upgrading and income improvement in non-privileged sectors. Such cases hold more relevant lessons for the majority of developing countries than the experiences of highly developed economies.