S7 Ep27: The World Bank's East Asian Miracle

About this episode

Nancy Birdsall reflects on the World Bank's report on East Asia's post-war growth and its implications for development policy.

In 1993, the World Bank published a report on a remarkable development story. East Asia's post-war growth — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and their neighbours — had lifted millions out of poverty in a generation. The report documented the influence of export subsidies, state-directed credit, land reform, and government-business dialogue. But the bank, constrained by the Washington Consensus of the time, underplayed the industrial policies that were at the heart of this miracle. Nancy Birdsall was head of the department that produced the report. In this week's VoxDev Talk, she looks back, talking to Tim Phillips about whether this stance affected policy in other developing countries. Birdsall tells Tim Phillips how the report came to exist at all — financed by the Japanese government as a deliberate strategy to expose the bank's economists to a success story their prevailing framework couldn't explain. With industrial policy back at the centre of economic debate, Birdsall's new article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives asks whether the bank missed its moment to embed those lessons into its operational work. The research behind this episode: Birdsall, Nancy. 2025…

People in this episode

Host: Tim Phillips

Guest: Nancy Birdsall

Topics covered

• development economics
• industrial policy
• East Asia
• poverty alleviation
• World Bank
• export subsidies
• state-directed credit

Keywords

• East Asian Miracle
• World Bank report
• development
• economic growth
• poverty
• industrial policy
• export subsidies

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: World Bank, Center for Global Development, Journal of Economic Perspectives

Places: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong

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