Economic Development under Political and Economic Asymmetries: The Case of Shanghai and Taiwan

The study investigates aspects of the economic development of Shanghai and Taiwan. It analyzes the similarities and differences in economic development between two regions with common cultural and ethnic backgrounds, but, also, with many asymmetries in their basic economic and political environments. In so doing, it also posits that the traditional approach of using per capita GNP in US dollars to measure a region's economic performance can be very misleading. A per capita production index is proposed to measure a region's output and a per capita consumption index is proposed to measure a region's consumption activities.