THE NEO-CLASSICAL ASCENDANCY: the AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC POLICY COMMUNITY and NORTHEAST ASIAN ECONOMIC GROWTH Trevor Matthews and John Ravenhill
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Working Paper No.1995/4 THE NEO-CLASSICAL ASCENDANCY: THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC POLICY COMMUNITY AND NORTHEAST ASIAN ECONOMIC GROWTH Trevor Matthews and John Ravenhill Canberra June 1995 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry Matthews, Trevor. The neo-classical ascendancy: the Australian economic policy community and northeast Asian economic growth. ISBN 0 7315 2167 6. 1. Australia – Foreign economic relations – East Asia. 2. Japan – Foreign economic relations – Australia. 3. Taiwan – Foreign economic relations – Australia. 4. Korea (South) – Foreign economic relations – Australia. 5. East Asia – Economic conditions. I. Ravenhill, John. II. Australian National University. Department of International Relations. II. Title. (Series: Working paper (Australian National University. Dept. of International Relations); 1995/4.) 337.9405 © Trevor Matthews and John Ravenhill DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS WORKING PAPERS The Department’s Working Paper series seeks to provide readers with access to current research on international relations. Reflecting the wide range of interest in the Department, it will include topics on global international politics and the international political economy, the Asian–Pacific region and issues of concern to Australian foreign policy. Publication as a ‘Working Paper’ does not preclude subsequent publication in scholarly journals or books, indeed it may facilitate publication by providing feedback from readers to authors. Unless otherwise stated, publications of the Department of International Relations are presented without endorsement as contributions to the public record and debate. Authors are responsible for their own analysis and conclusions. Department of International Relations Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Australian National University Canberra ACT Australia ABSTRACT The Australian economic policy community has vigorously championed an interpretation of Northeast Asia’s economic success that sees that success through the prism of conventional neo-classical economics. The leading voices in that policy community have argued that selective governmental assistance to targeted industries has been neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the economic success of the Northeast Asian market economies (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan); that in cases where targeting could be considered to have been successful, the targeting was ‘market conforming’; and that where governments have attempted to promote and assist particular industries the results have been as harmful as they have been beneficial. This paper critically examines these claims. It questions the evidence used by the policy community, particularly its excessive reliance on a small number of studies based on econometric modelling and its marked reluctance to acknowledge and confront empirical evidence that challenges a neo-classical interpretation. It also highlights the inadequate treatment of externalities and technology in the neo- classical approach. The paper presents evidence, much of it from industrial case studies, to show that none of the Northeast Asian governments has been content to trust the course of economic development exclusively to the market. Intervention to facilitate the acquisition, adaptation and diffusion of technology has been pervasive. All three countries have consciously targeted industries that were perceived to be strategic for the economy’s future growth—industries that were skill- and capital-intensive, industries that were expected to generate technological spillovers and other externalities, and industries whose products were identified as having high elasticities of demand. This evidence fits better the interventionist rationales of strategic trade theory and new growth theories than it does the so-called market- conforming rationale of neo-classical economic theory. Northeast Asian governments have used trade and industrial policies to achieve two ends: (i) to assist domestic firms to become internationally competitively enabling them to realise scale and learning economies; and (ii) to generate externalities that benefit a wide range of leading-edge industries. THE NEO-CLASSICAL ASCENDANCY: THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC POLICY COMMUNITY AND NORTHEAST ASIAN ECONOMIC GROWTH Trevor Matthews and John Ravenhill The shift in the world’s centre of gravity towards East Asia has brought with it large changes in the international economic and geo-political systems, as well as in the analytical and ideological prisms through which people all over the world view reality. Ross Garnaut, Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy, p. 5 The Australian economic policy community’s interpretation of industrial policy in the Northeast Asian economies has been inextricably caught up in the debate over domestic economic policies. Advocates of the level playing field have been determined to ensure that their simple policy prescription should not be complicated by an acknowledgement that industrial policies have worked elsewhere. This is seen in a number of official reports. Take Ross Garnaut’s Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy.1 This report firmly placed on the political agenda the importance to Australia of the phenomenally rapid and sustained rates of economic growth in Northeast Asia. By viewing the Northeast Asian success through a conventional neo-classical economic prism, the Garnaut Report is tellingly silent on the issue of state assistance to targeted industries. This interpretation—viewing Northeast Asian success through the prism of neo-classical economics—is one that has been vigorously championed by the economic policy community in Australia. In official reports, academic papers, speeches, interviews, and newspaper articles, the leading voices in that policy community have argued that the Northeast Asian economies demonstrate: • that selective governmental assistance to targeted industries has been neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the economic success of those economies; • that in cases where targeting could be considered to have been successful, the targeting was ‘market-conforming’; and that attempts by government to promote and assist particular industries are as likely to be harmful as beneficial. 1 Ross Garnaut, Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1989. 2 The policy community has also been at pains to refute claims being made by Australian advocates of selective industrial intervention that the Northeast Asian economies demonstrated that new developments in international trade theory (‘strategic trade theory’) could work in practice. The policy community has argued that strategic trade theory rests on fragile assumptions unlikely to hold in practice and too intimidating to be a practical guide to action. The most influential statement of these claims is the Industry Commission’s study Strategic Trade Policy: The East Asian Experience,2 and it is that study which we will use to exemplify the economic policy community’s interpretation of Northeast Asian economic growth. It is an appropriate text to use for that purpose. The Industry Commission published the study to refute claims being made by Australian advocates of selective industrial intervention that strategic trade theory offered an intellectual justification for such intervention and that the Northeast Asian economies constituted evidence that the new theory could actually work in practice. Even though the Industry Commission’s study was entirely derivative and contained no new empirical work, economists and economic commentators in Australia have frequently cited the study as an authority to support their arguments that strategic industrial assistance contributed little (or nothing) to the strong economic (and export) performance of the Northeast Asian economies.3 The study has also attracted attention outside of Australia.4 We first examine each of the above four claims. (i) that selective assistance to targeted industries has been neither a necessary or a sufficient condition for the economic success of those economies. The IC study draws on the experience of five economies in the region—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong. It claims that strategic targeting cannot be taken as a common factor in East Asia’s economic success since it was not 2 Industry Commission, Strategic Trade Theory: The East Asian Experience, Information Paper, Industry Commission, Canberra, 1990. 3 See for example Kym Anderson, ‘International Trade and Australian Protectionism’, in Stephen King and Peter Lloyd (eds), Economic Rationalism: Dead End or Way Forward?, Allen and Unwin, St. Leonards, 1993, pp. 108–26; Kym Anderson and Christopher Findlay, ‘The End of Tariff Protection’, Current Affairs Bulletin, vol. 70, no. 3 (August), 1993, pp. 12–8; Richard Blandy, ‘A Panel of Views: Economic Rationalists and Anti-Economic Rationalists’, in King and Lloyd (eds), Economic Rationalism, pp. 28–36; P.P. McGuiness, ‘Counting the Cost of Export Subsidies’, Australian, 23 November 1990; P.P. McGuiness, ‘Industry Policy Won’t Protect Us’, Australian, 1 November 1991. 4 Jonathan Ostry, ‘Are Growth Strategies in East Asia Relevant for New Zealand?’, Finance and Development: A Publication of the IMF and the World Bank, vol. 31, no. 1, 1994, pp. 13–15. 3 present at all in Hong Kong, ‘the most outstanding and robust example of the benefits of free markets’. Hong Kong provides ‘the most convincing evidence’ that exceptional economic performance