Catching‐Up and Technological Progress of the ASEAN Economies

Total factor productivity growth of the five ASEAN founding members is estimated by decomposing total factor productivity growth into technical efficiency and technological progress. By using the stochastic frontier model with individual‐specific temporal pattern of technical efficiency for the period of 1981–2003, the present paper identifies the unique temporal pattern of productivity changes in each country, to analyze the relationship between country characteristics and the inherent efficiency and productivity changes. The empirical results indicate that over the study period, growth in Singapore and Malaysia was largely driven by both technological progress and input accumulation, whereas growth in Thailand was induced by an improvement in technical efficiency and through input accumulation.