[KS] Book announcement: East Asia and Eastern Europe in a Globalized Perspective - Lessons from Korea and Estonia

Bernhard Seliger bjseliger at yahoo.de
Tue Nov 17 21:12:47 EST 2015


Dearcolleagues,     the developmentexperience of states in the 20th century at the first glance offersa bewildering variety and often downright contradicting models, whichnevertheless led to catching-up and rapid growth rates, leaving policy-makersin countries trying to emulate such models at a loss. Take, for example, thecontradicting cases of West Germany after World War II and South Korea underPark Chung-Hee. West Germany embarked on a path of liberalization of marketsunder its system of Social Market Economy and “order policy” (Ordnungspolitik).South Korea, though studying and sometimes explicitly referring to the WestGerman experience, on the contrary, used a model of state-led development toachieve the goal of rapid development. And both, though using starklycontradicting policy prescriptions, were very successful. Central and EasternEuropean states in their development choices after the change fromcentrally-planned economies certainly first looked West. This had cultural andhistorical, political and economic reasons. None the least, requirements of thejoint rules of the European Communities which these countries wanted to join assoon as possible made such a choice looking natural. Since economists, used atoptimizing, are uneasy with such a divergent growth experience, variousexplanations have been forwarded to reconcile these seemingly contradictoryresults. One of them is that different stages of economic development needdifferent institutional settings, and in this sense that South Korea in the 1960swere rather comparable to Germany in the late 19th century. Anotherone is that there is no single institutional optimum, but there are severalpeaks. This again might be related to institutional embeddedness and informalinstitutions.    Most of the papersin this collection were first presented at the 5thDialogue on Social Market Economy: East Asia and Eastern Europe in aglobalized perspective: Lessons from Korea and Estonia at the Universityof Tartu, Estonia, on April 24-27, 2013. The South Korean economy lived throughvery tough times in the past two decades: after the Asian crisis of 1997 and1998 unraveled the old Korean growth model, a spectacular recovery followedaround the turn of the millennium. However, soon the world financial and economiccrisis hit Korea hard. Though it could escape from a recession and even grewslightly in 2008, the main crisis year, the Korean economy with its dependenceon exports was facing a tremendous challenge. At the same time, South Koreabecame a leading member of the G20 and hosted the 2009 summit of this powerfulorganization. All the time, the North Korean threat hung like a Damocles swordover the region, hampering severely South Korean economic stability. This wasthe background for the conference, which was made possible by a generous grantof the Academy of Korean Studies in Korea. It brought together European,American, Asian and Korean scholars to discuss the potential lessons fromeconomic development of Korea and Estonia.    Contents: Ralph Wrobel:Economic Models for New Industrializing Countries in Comparative Perspective –Sung-Jo Park: Developmental State in Korea (60s-70s) Revisited:Institution-Building for the Making of «Coordinated Market» – JannoReiljan/Ingra Paltser: The Implementation of Research and Development Policy inEuropean and Asian Countries – Herman W. Hoen: Emerging Market Economies andthe Financial Crisis: Is there Institutional Convergence between Europe andAsia? – Karmo Kroos: Developmental Welfare Capitalism in East Asia with aSpecial Emphasis on South Korea – Joachim Ahrens/Manuel Stark: IndependentOrganizations in Authoritarian Regimes: contradiction in terms or an effectiveinstrument of developmental states? – Erik Terk: Practicing Catching-up:a Comparison of Development Models of East Asian and Central-Eastern EuropeanCountries – Jüri Sepp/Uku Varblane: The Decomposition of ProductivityGap between Estonia and Korea – Jüri Sepp/Helje Kaldaru/Jürgen Joamets: TheCharacteristics and Position of the Economic Structures of Estonia and Koreaamong the OECD Countries – Bernhard J. Seliger: Lessons of Korea forEmerging Economies: An unexpected journey from rags to riches, from crisis torecovery. Research has been supported by a grantof the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS). More information about the book can befound at:    South Korea andCentral and Eastern Europe faced stark choices when starting their respectivecatching-up process. For other countries, institutional choices were lessstark, but still were and are relevant, beyond simple piecemeal engineering ofcertain microeconomic or macroeconomic variables. The conference,which was the fifth conference in the series “Dialogues on Social MarketEconomy”, organized by Prof. Dr. Jüri Sepp, Dr. Bernhard Seliger and Prof.Dr. Ralph Wrobel, showed that the debate about economic systems, though todayrather neglected in many economic curricula, still is raging and indeed came tothe forefront of economic policy-making again after the world financial crisis,though often disguised in much more limited terms like reform of the financialsector. The cross-regional comparative study of problems, here that of Koreaand Estonia, was a very useful approach; not in the meaning of a one-wayrelationship but as a source of comparative learning.     The book has been co-edited by Dr.Bernhard Seliger, Prof. Jüri Sepp and Prof. Ralph Wrobel.     Bernhard Seliger is a representative ofthe Hanns Seidel Foundation in Seoul (South Korea) and Adjunct Senior Lecturerat the University of Witten-Herdecke (Germany). Jüri Sepp is Professor of EconomicPolicy at the University of Tartu (Estonia). Ralph Wrobel is Professor of Economicsand Economic Policy at the West Saxon University of Zwickau (Germany).    You can find more information on thebook at: http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=89515&cid=5&concordeid=266860          Dr.Bernhard Seliger ResidentRepresentative HannsSeidel Foundation Korea Office    501, SooYoung Bdlg.  13Hannamdaero 20-gil Hannam-dong Yongsan-Gu Seoul04419 Republicof Korea    Tel. + 82 2 7905344 Fax. + 82 2 7905346 e-mail: seliger at hss.or.kr Website: www.hss.or.kr  Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/HannsSeidelFoundationKorea     

  
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