Your task is to work individually and produce a 3500 word report. You have to complete a report within the following scenario. You are employed by the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) as a researcher and have been asked to write a briefing report on the nature of the prolific growth and development within the countries of East Asia since the 1950s.

Your specific task is to identify the principal arguments in the debate over whether the growth was a result of so-called ‘developmental statist’ policies pursued by the individual nations in the region or the operation of market forces (as depicted by the ‘Flying Geese’ paradigm).

You need to take an historical perspective in order to reach a conclusion and to refer to the specific strategies pursued by the most influential countries in the region. Assertions and statements should be under-pinned by academic theories and concepts and the readership will expect a document of high analytical quality.

Doctor’s advice about the structure of the analysis: ( IMPORTANT!!! )
Your first task is 1. To establish what the FG(Flying geese) paradigm would predict in terms of the shift of comparative advantage from lead country to follower countries, hierarchy of industries and countries in the region etc.
2.You need to explain how the paradigm makes this prediction without getting lost in lots of descriptive detail.
3.Then you can go on to explain how most countries have pursued some sort of developmental statist policies. Give examples and refer to different models – Japan/Korea and China need to be covered as a minimum – but you can also refer to others. But again do not go into lots of detail – your objective is to argue that these policies were pursued and giving brief illustrative examples is sufficient. You need an historical approach simply because the countries developed at different points in time.

4.Then you need to provide a balanced conclusion – there is no definitive answer and the nature of catch-up growth in the region is complex. So I am not expecting you to prove conclusively whether market forces or government policies were more important – that is not possible. However, I expect your analysis to reveal the complexity of the debate and to indicate that the outcome was the interplay of these two phenomena.