This book makes meaningful and startling comparisons between the four tiger economies in Asia (Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore) and the Philippines. The book reflects a fourteen-year study and looks into the demographics, land areas, population densities, and other social data that sometimes make for what now contributes to the composition of the 'human misery index.' The figures presented in this study will shatter much of the established knowledge about these countries. The book also explores the conventional economic data of the five countries, pinpointing differences and commonalities. Focus points include the size of income per head, their GNPs and their growth rates during the transforming period, how these were financed-internally and externally, their governments' role and the impacts upon their costs of living. The study then concentrates on the main engine of growth in these economies-the foreign trade sector. The author highlights each countries' foreign trade in terms of nature, composition, direction, restructuring, terms of trade and exchange rates. The study brings to light the history of each country, its peculiarities, the policies undertaken to arrive where it is today, its present state, and where each country may go from here. The measures adopted in this study are in turn placed upon the Philippine scenario of those times.