The very export model that made Asia rich is now the primary reason it cannot survive climate change.
April 26, 2026
Original Paper
The Structural Trap: Why Asia's Economic Success Prevents Transformation
SSRN · 6645779
The Takeaway
Export-led growth creates a rigid institutional structure that prevents a transition to green energy. Economists often argue that wealth provides the resources necessary to adapt to environmental shifts. This research shows that Asia's economic success has created a lock-out where the political costs of change are too high to bear. The industries that drive the region's prosperity are the same ones that must be dismantled for survival. This paradox means that the most successful economies are the most vulnerable to future collapse.
From the abstract
Asia faces a distinctive structural paradox: the very institutional arrangements that generated three decades of unprecedented prosperity-export-led growth, supplychain integration, capital-intensive modernization-now prevent the transformative restructuring climate severity demands. <div> <i>This paper empirically examines this paradox through analysis of transformation implementation</i> in 15 Asian economies (2024-2025), revealing that <i>export concentration creates asymmetric lock-in preven