But it seems likely that the very rapid growth achieved by the Asian Tiger economies, and by China, can be explained very readily in conventional terms, by looking at growth in the inputs of labour and capital, and at productivity improvements. Thus demographics and migration trends are obviously important in determining how fast a labour force will grow.
And Asian economies have experienced very rapid increases in their effective labour forces in recent years. Singapore, for example, almost doubled the proportion of its population engaged in the formal labour force between 1960 and 1990. That increase accounts for close to one-third of Singapore’s remarkable average growth rate of 8.5 percent over that period.