Singapore's Economic Development: Retrospection And Reflections

by Linda Y.C. Lim

Singapore is known internationally for its successful economic development. Key to its economic successes is a variety of policies put into place over the past 50 years since its independence. Singapore's Economic Development: Retrospection and Reflections provides a retrospective analysis of independent Singapore's economic development, from the perspective of different policy domains each considered by different expert scholars in that particular field.The book is written by academic economists in a style that is accessible to non-experts. Each chapter includes reviews of past scholarship, current data on each policy area, and reflections on required or desirable future policy changes and outcomes.By examining the evolution of past and current policies which combined to make Singapore's development a success and exploring emerging developmental challenges, Singapore's Economic Development: Retrospection and Reflections gives readers a better understanding of Singapore's economic trajectory and future.

Genres: Economics

332 pages, Paperback

Published December 30, 2015

Reviews

[Nathan Alanmanou]

This book provides a comprehensive insight into the defining traits of Singapore's economy, and highlights some of the contrasts that we see from other countries. Singapore's heavily inward Foreign Direct Investment growth has been positive in bringing multinational corporations with professional cultures and modernized processes to the Singaporean workers, but it has come at the cost of local entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, this FDI-intensive economic strategy has led to strong GDP growth, and coupled with Singapore's very clean and competent public sector, creates opportunity for its people in a way that other developing countries have failed to do.

The book gives some challenge to traditional neoliberal consensus on economic growth at all costs, posing some concerns about too much immigration potentially stagnating wages among low-skilled workers, and reducing companies' incentive to increase work productivity given their abundance of labor. Toward the end it also includes some criticisms of Singapore's heavily productivist redistribution scheme, entertaining the idea that it could be more universalist and humanitarian in nature to account for people who have gotten the wrong end of the stick.

This book is very technical and very academic, almost to a fault, where in many instances it comes at the cost of being digestible. I frequently read pages without comprehending anything. If you are looking to get an introductory insight into Singapore's economy with little previous economic understanding, this will be a rough read. I may read this again years down the road.