ABSTRACT
The high-income countries in the region are also likely to grow, but more slowly. There have been exceptional cases, small countries becoming high-tech specialists, Taiwan in East Asia and Ireland in Europe, for example. But generally as a country achieves a high level of per capita output, using capital-intensive production methods close to the technological frontier, a rapid pace of productivity growth becomes more difficult. Typically the mature countries show productivity growth trends between 1.5 and 3 percent annually although in some cases the potentials of the new economy have allowed some mature countries to grow more rapidly for a period especially economies like South Korea that have export markets for a large fraction of their high-tech product output. The information and communications technology (ICT) revolution will contribute to further rapid growth in some of these countries.
