Open Access

Jens J. Krüger, Uwe Cantner, Horst Hanusch

• The post world war II growth experience of the socalled east asian tiger states characterized by high growth rates has stimulated the discussion about causal factors. Paul Krugman holds that high capital accumulation rather than gains in efficiency or technological progress in these countries has spured growth. His position has soon been heavily disputed. Aside of arguments pointing to the innovative industry structure in these countries Richard Nelson and Howard Pack have recently critised the methods for measuring of technological progess. Applying the nonparametric approach to frontier function determinantion (data envelopment analysis) and the malmquist index of productivity we take up this criticism. By this we calculate index numbers for technological progress and efficiency change for a sample of 18 american, asian, and european countries. For the tiger states our results then confirm, on the one hand, Krugmans thesis for the years 1960-1973. On the other hand, we find evidenceThe post world war II growth experience of the socalled east asian tiger states characterized by high growth rates has stimulated the discussion about causal factors. Paul Krugman holds that high capital accumulation rather than gains in efficiency or technological progress in these countries has spured growth. His position has soon been heavily disputed. Aside of arguments pointing to the innovative industry structure in these countries Richard Nelson and Howard Pack have recently critised the methods for measuring of technological progess. Applying the nonparametric approach to frontier function determinantion (data envelopment analysis) and the malmquist index of productivity we take up this criticism. By this we calculate index numbers for technological progress and efficiency change for a sample of 18 american, asian, and european countries. For the tiger states our results then confirm, on the one hand, Krugmans thesis for the years 1960-1973. On the other hand, we find evidence for an increasing importance of technological progress for growth in these countries within the period 1973-1990.…