Market-led Integration

Abstract

Akamatsu’s (1962) simile of ganko keitai, or the wild geese flying pattern, has been often used to explain the linkage between industrial growth and the changing trade pattern of a developing economy as well as to explain the growth and trade nexus of the Asia-Pacific economies. In the former case, it shows the standard process of an industry in a developing economy beginning at the stage when the product is being imported and the output of the industry essentially substitutes for imports, at the next stage the economy becomes self-sufficient in that product. The last stage is when this industry grows and turns to exports. In the latter case, which is germane here, Japan is seen as the leading goose economy of the Asia-Pacific region, while the other economies form the rest of the V-formation of the flying geese pattern. They receive a stimulus from the leading economy in the same manner as the following birds do from the birds ahead in the V-formation.