Int. J. Sustainable Economy, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2009 245 Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Capital productivity determinants: East Asian perspectives Elsadig Musa Ahmed Faculty of Business and Law, Economics Unit, Multimedia University, 75450 Melaka, Malaysia E-mails: elsadigmusa@yahoo.com; asadiq29@hotmail.com Abstract: This study converses the effects of capital productivity and labour intensity on total factor productivity (TFP) intensity in ASEAN5 countries, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, plus 3 countries such as China, Japan and South Korea. This study contributes to the literature of growth accounting method in the area of calculating capital productivity, labour intensity and their simultaneous contribution, which is referred to as TFP per unit of capital. The study finds that there is a little contribution of the TFP intensity growth during the periods of the study and confirms that high capital input growth resulted in low capital productivity with insignificant technological progress experiences by these countries. Keywords: capital productivity; East Asian economies; labour intensity; sustainable economic growth. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ahmed, E.M. (2009) ‘Capital productivity determinants: East Asian perspectives’, Int. J. Sustainable Economy, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp.245–254. Biographical note: Elsadig Musa Ahmed is a Senior Lecturer at Economics Unit and a Coordinator for Postgraduate programs of the Faculty of Business and Law, Multimedia University, Melaka, Malaysia. He is a reviewer and an expert of the second millennium ecosystem assessment report “Biodiversity and human well-being: a synthesis report for the convention on biological diversity”, 2005, Economic Modelling, World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, International Journal of Economic Policy Studies, The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability and Global Studies Journal. He is the author of the book entitled Green Productivity: Applications in Malaysia’s Manufacturing, 2008. 1 Introduction International Monetary Fund (IMF, 1998) reports that, over the past three decades, the economies of East Asia made remarkable economic progress. Following on the heels of Japan’s double-digit growth in the 1960s, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore grew at very rapid rates since mid-1960s, with their per capita incomes rising to match those in a number of advanced economies in Western Europe. They were followed in the