ABSTRACT
For much of the 1980s and early 1990s the Asian ‘tiger economies’ headed the international growth rate and inward investment tables. High-growth economies such as Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore were joined by China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand in what many analysts interpreted as a fundamental structural shift in the global economy towards the Pacific Rim. The success of the ‘Asian model’ was attributed to common factors such as cheap labour, strong investment, aggressive export promotion and ‘Asian values’, a cultural bias toward hard work, and saving combined with, in some cases, an acceptance or at least tolerance of authoritarian government. However, by 1997 a currency crisis raised doubts about the sustainability of Asian growth and a more geographically diverse group of countries, known as the ‘new tigers’ or ‘tigers of the new millennium’ (including Chile and Ireland), took over as the growth leaders. The characteristics shared by this new group were the small size of their internal market, the existence of political stability, and the adoption in the 1980s of policies that provided solid foundations for sustained growth and effective economic management. A notable feature is the role played by financial services in the success of these ‘new tigers’.
