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Modern Asian economic history has often been written in terms of Western impact and Asia's response to it. This volume argues that the growth of intra-regional trade, migration, and capital and money flows was a crucial factor that determined the course of East Asian economic development

Japanese IT investment has stagnated. Though some Japanese companies are investing in IT, this does not represent offensive IT investment. I analyzed what kind of IT investment would lead company profit, growth, and what kind of IT investment made reluctance for companies. I found out empirical relations between IT investment and corporate productivity. Analyses of productivity revealed low productivity among some business types and fields, where significantly fewer benefits were being produced by IT investment. Based on these results, I showed how productivity improvement supported by IT investment encourages company profit and growth. These results indicated further discussion for government policy implications.

East Asian industrialisation has shown that modern industry has occurred across different cultures under a variety of factor‐endowment conditions. The global history of the diffusion of industrialisation over the past two centuries suggests two distinct routes. The first is the 'Western path' associated with capital‐ and energy‐intensive industry. The second path to creating a modern industrial economy is the 'East Asian path' based on labour‐intensive industrialisation that has built on quality labour resources cultivated in the traditional sector. This was the path followed by Japan from the nineteenth century and by many other countries in Asia during the twentieth century.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This book addresses the issue of how a country, which was incorporated into the world economy as a periphery, could make a transition to the emerging state, capable of undertaking the task of economic development and industrialization. It offers historical and contemporary case studies of transition, as well as the international background under which such a transition was successfully made (or delayed), by combining the approaches of economic history and development economics. Its aim is to identify relevant historical contexts, that is, the 'initial conditions' and internal and external forces which governed the transition. It also aims to understand what current low-income developing countries require for their transition. Three economic driving forces for the transition are identified. They are: (1) labor-intensive industrialization, which offers ample employment opportunities for labor force; (2) international trade, which facilitates efficient international division of labor; and (3) agricultural development, which improves food security by increasing supply of staple foods. The book presents a bold account of each driver for the transition.

1. Introduction / Gareth Austin and Kaoru Sugihara -- 2. Labour-intensive industrialization in global history : an interpretation of East Asian experiences / Kaoru Sugihara -- 3. The industrious revolutions in East and West / Jan de Vries -- 4. Proto-industrialization and labour-intensive industrialization : reflections on Smithian growth and the role of skill intensity / Osamu Saito -- 5. Labour-intensity and industrializaton in colonial India / Tirthankar Roy -- 6. Labour-intensive industrialization in the rural Yangzi Delta : late imperial patterns and their modern fates / Kenneth Pomeranz -- 7. From peasant economy to urban agglomeration : the transformation of 'labour-intensive industrialization' in modern Japan / Masayuki Tanimoto -- 8. Government promotion of labour-intensive industrialization in Indonesia, 1930-1975 / Pierre van der Eng -- 9. Labour intensity and manufacturing in West Africa, c.1450-c.2000 / Gareth Austin -- 10. 'Colonial' industry and 'modern' manufacturing : opportunities for labour-intensive growth in Latin America c.1800-1940s / Colin M. Lewis -- 11. Labour-intensive industrialization: the case of nineteenth-century Alsace / Michel Hau and Nicolas Stoskopf -- 12. Labour-intensive industrialization and global economic development: reflections / Gareth Austin.