The rapid economic development of a number of Asian countries over the past three decades lulled many observers into taking excessively complacent positions about the new ‘emerging markets’. The financial crisis of the late 1990s, which brought this period of growth to a temporary halt, resulted in an equally dramatic change of mood about the prospects of these countries. Led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and many academics, there was a widespread feeling that rent-seeking and corruption underpinned the crisis, and that without uprooting the institutional structure of ‘crony capitalism’, the prospects for the region were dim. The period as a whole thus provides a rich source of evidence with which to examine the role of rent-seeking in economic development. How important have corruption, patronage, lobbying and kickbacks been in developing countries? Have they been responsible for slow growth or the reverse? What determines the magnitude and effects of different types of rents, of corruption and of patron-client exchanges? How did Asian countries grow so rapidly in the 1980s despite an apparently widespread problem with rent-seeking? To answer these questions, we start by examining theoretical models and asking how they need to be amended and extended. Corruption, clientelism and other forms of rent-seeking were widespread during Asia's high-growth period and it is this experience which most of our case studies address. Understanding the role of rent-seeking in the period of growth is critical for assessing the adequacy of explanations of the subsequent crisis in terms of crony capitalism which many commentators were quick to offer ex post.