The ‘flying geese’ model of regional development: A constructive interpretation

In the mid‐1930s, Professor Kaname Akamatsu developed a theory on economic development in an international context using the experience of Japan during the preceding decades. The theory, although well known among Japanese economists, was virtually unknown to their Western counterparts until the 1960s, when the first articles by Akamatsu were published in English, followed by work by other Japanese economists.The ‘flying geese’ model originally depicted the development over time of a single industry, but can easily be reinterpreted as a model for structural change and/or the growth and development of a group of countries. The issue of foreign direct investment was not discussed much in the original formulations of the theory, but can easily be linked to it, as the work of Kiyoshi Kojima and others has demonstrated.The purpose of the present paper is to give an interpretation of the ‘flying geese’ model of development and to assess the usefulness of the model for understanding economic development and industrial policy in East Asia. Use of the model as a framework for analysing regional economic interdependence in general is also discussed