A Study On The Relationship Of Public Investment And Economic Growth Of ASEAN-5

Since the 1960s, except two short periods of the world economic recession in the mid-1980s and Asian financial crisis in 1997, the economic growth of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand maintained a relatively high economic growth, while the Philippines gradually lagged behind the other four ASEAN countries, due to its political turmoil and problems of its economic policies.The dissertation addresses the issue of the source of economic growth and disparity of ASEAN-5 in the perspective of public investment (including public infrastructure investment, public R&D investment and public education investment), and comes to the following conclusions:1. Public infrastructure investment has different impacts on economic growth of ASEAN-5 because of the differences in investment efficiency and scale. Infrastructure capital of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand has significant positive effect on economic growth; however, the infrastructure capital has no significant effect on economic growth of the Philippines because of its low investment efficiency.2. Public R&D investment and fiscal incentives to R&D in Singapore and Malaysia largely promoted private R&D investment, resulting in an increase of overall R&D investment. As a result, public R&D activities of these two countries have a significant positive effect on economic growth. On the contrary, public R&D activities of Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines have little impact on the private R&D investment, and the overall R&D investment as percentage of GDP presents a decreasing trend. Therefore, in the three countries, public R&D activities have limited effect on economic growth.3. Among ASEAN-5 countries, government education expenditure of Singapore and the Philippines significantly promoted economic growth. However, government educational expenditure of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand can not significantly explain economic growth of these countries, and the structural problem and low efficiency of government educational expenditure are the main reasons.The analysis here would complement the research on the source of economic growth and economic disparity of ASEAN countries in the perspective of public investment.