Paper Title
Getting The Prices Wrong: The Case of South Korea

Abstract
This paper attempts to understand the fascinating story of South Korea’s phenomenal success in the second half of twentieth century by reviewing the theory of “getting the prices wrong”. According to Alice H. Amsden, the state intervened with subsidies deliberately to distort relative prices in order to stimulate economic activity in late industrializing countries. The paper explores the extent to which challenging the conventional market mechanism by “getting the prices wrong” explains South Korea’s higher growth trajectory. It analyses the crucial role of government in imposing strict performance standards that made East-Asian nations, specifically South Korea to grow faster than other emerging countries, such as India, Brazil, Turkey and Mexico. Thus, the paper concludes with the discussion of South Korea’s strategy of depicting “When Wrong is Right” to achieve high growth rates. Keywords - East Asian Economies, Market mechanism, Industrialization