Southeast Asia’s Middle-Income Trap: Education Quality, Innovation Deficits, and the Politics of Upgrading
The source argues that Southeast Asia’s difficulty in reaching high-income status is driven less by education access than by weak education quality and underdeveloped R&D ecosystems that constrain productivity upgrading. It contends that political economy conditions—especially the absence of durable “upgrading coalitions”—limit the implementation of reforms needed to sustain innovation-led growth.