In the early stages of development, moving a worker from the land to a factory quadruples their value-added contribution to the economy on average*.
Much of Asia's extraordinary growth to date has been underwritten by this one-off transition, but the windfall gains of rapid industrialisation are starting to decline and if the region is to continue on the road to prosperity it needs to find ways to boost productivity and encourage new economic activity.
At the moment, inadequate infrastructure is possibly the biggest brake on emerging markets' medium-term growth prospects.
It stunts both production and investment: few businesspeople will invest in large-scale production capacity when they cannot guarantee a reliable supply of electricity.
Few farmers will upgrade their land if their crops are going to rot before they get to market because of bad roads and inadequate warehousing.
With some standout exceptions such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, the problem is particularly acute in Asia.
The latest data from the Penn World Tables indicate that the United States has more than five times as much capital stock per worker as China, 14 times as much as India **, and that regional infrastructure investment as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product has been declining in recent years.
Infrastructure investment builds the bridge that connects the old growth engine of industrialisation with the new growth engine of sustainable productivity gains.