Thanks to Scott Sumner for highlighting this interesting and accessible piece by Garrett Jones here.  To see if you want to read it, start by taking a look at the graphs.

In the title “National IQ and National Productivity: The Hive Mind Across Asia," having read Noah Smith’s diatribe against the Asian "hive mind” stereotype, I recommend ignoring the phrase “Hive Mind.” Also, since IQ depends a lot on how hard people study, I interpret “IQ” as a measure of human capital that may be superior in many ways to just counting years of schooling. In any case, this set of facts is quite intriguing.