Conclusions and Lessons for Development Policy

This chapter attempts to bring together the different strands of thinking and approaches laid out in the previous chapters in order to provide a coherent and concise response to the basic question raised in the title of this book, namely, why did East Asia surge ahead in its economic development during the second half of the twentieth century while Latin America fell behind, in relative terms. At one level, this response can be provided in terms of a set of propositions or theses related to the four “deep determinants” that were examined throughout the discussion of this book, which provide a fairly clear diagnosis of the factors that have favored East Asia, on the one hand, and that have hindered Latin America, on the other. At another level, the response to the basic question examined in the book can be provided by delineating the key features of the development process of East Asia, which account for its exceptional record of economic growth and, at the same time, sharply differentiate its experience from that of Latin America. Many of the positive features about successful development that emerge from the analysis of comparative regional development in this book reinforce, or have contributed to, current thinking at a more general level about the essential features of the development process and the challenges for developing countries in the twenty-first century.