The comparative homogeneity of the East Asian NIC exports of similar manufactures

The “Four Tigers” — South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore serve as a model for successful export driven growth. This paper examines the degree to which their export growth followed similar or divergent patterns in response to income and price changes. Differing responses were found, in general, to characterize export growth of these four countries. However, similar patterns were found to describe the exports of certain sophisticated, research and development (R&D) intensive products. Several explanations are posited and empirically examined.