Comparative Analysis of Structural Transformation Process of Selected Asian Developing Economies

Abstract

This article tries to analyse country-level variations in the selected Asian developing economies in terms of their growth path and their position in the process of structural transformation in the recent decades, by estimating the turning point (TP) for each country. It also examines the magnitude of the contribution of intersectoral shifts and within-sector productivity gains in the economy-wide labour productivity growth by conducting the shift-share analysis. The results of turning point (TP) estimation show that all these countries had achieved their turning points except the Philippines between 1980 and 2018. However, the productivity increase in agriculture is not evident as their GAP in the year when TP would have been achieved is not even near to zero. Further, the shift-share analysis highlights the contribution of within-sector productivity growth is relatively more than that of intersectoral shifts of labour. Thus, the main concern is to make sure that there is a steady intersectoral movement of labour from low productive to high productive sectors, which can be done primarily through expanding the productive sectors (industry and services) to generate employment opportunities. Also, equally important is increasing the productivity of the agricultural sector so that the process of structural transformation could happen smoothly. For this, the public and private investments in R&D of both agriculture and non-agriculture sectors are highly crucial.