Professor Jay K. Rosengard Seminar "The Great East Asia - Southeast Asia Divergence: Rich Asian Tigers vs. Asian Kittens Stuck in a Middle Income Trap?"

(Prof. Rosengard, Mr. Kurihara from the left)

Seminar outline
Title: "The Great East Asia - Southeast Asia Divergence: Rich Asian Tigers vs. Asian Kittens Stuck in a Middle Income Trap?"
Speaker: Jay K. Rosengard, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School
Moderator: Jun Kurihara, Research Director, CIGS

Program
ProgramPDF：86KB

Speech summary and Q&A
Speech summary and Q&A PDF：263.4KB

Presentation
Presentation by Professor RosengardPDF：1426KB

Abstract of the Speech
South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore ("Rich Asian Tigers") were once very poor but are now quite wealthy. In contrast, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines ("Asian Kittens"), although much better off than they were five decades ago, have nevertheless been unable to move into the ranks of high-income countries. Instead, they appear to be stuck in a middle income trap. Many emerging economies would be thrilled to achieve Southeast Asian growth rates but by East Asian standards, progress has been modest at best. In this context, the seminar will address two perplexing questions: What accounts for this difference in performance among Asian economies? Is the divergence destined to persist, or will it evolve into convergence?

Speaker's profile
Jay K. Rosengard, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, has forty years of international experience designing, implementing, and evaluating development policies in public finance and fiscal strategy, tax and budget reform, municipal finance and management, intergovernmental fiscal relations, banking and financial institutions development, financial inclusion, micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) finance, mobile banking, and public administration. He has worked for a wide variety of multilateral and bilateral donors, as well as directly for host governments and private sector clients. Rosengard is Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government's Financial Sector Program, which focuses on the development of bank and nonbank financial institutions and alternative financing instruments. This includes microfinance (small-scale lending and local savings mobilization), mainstream commercial banking (general and special-purpose banks), and wholesale financial intermediation (municipal development funds, venture capital funds, pooled financing, secondary mortgage facilities, and securitization). In addition, Rosengard is a Faculty Affiliate of both the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Center for International Development. At the Ash Center, he is Academic Director of the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and Faculty Chair of the HKS Indonesia Program. He also serves as Faculty Chair of four executive programs: FIPED (Financial Institutions for Private Enterprise Development), which focuses on sustainable and effective MSME finance; ComTax (Comparative Tax Policy and Administration), which addresses key strategic and tactical issues in tax design and implementation; VELP (Vietnam Executive Leadership Program), which is an innovative policy dialogue with senior Vietnamese leadership; and Transformasi (Leadership Transformation in Indonesia), which is designed to assist Indonesia in its decentralization initiatives.