Advanced Research on Asian Economy and Economies of Other Continents: Economic Dynamism, Openness, and Inclusion (ePub)

As Singapore progresses from a newly-independent nation to a more mature economy, the economic challenges it faces have evolved.

In the 50 years following Singapore's independence, the country tackled economic challenges relating to a fledgling nation, that included launching onto a path of economic take-off, and managing workers' wage aspirations without rising unemployment. It met those challenges, successfully transiting from relative poverty in the 1960s to relative prosperity today.

As the country enters the next phase of its economic development, having now surpassed the US standard of living as measured by real GDP per capita, it faces another set of challenges: How to transit from catch-up growth arising from technological diffusion from frontier economies, to generating indigenous innovation? How to face the problem of a shrinking local workforce? How to manage a shift in job preferences with rising wealth and educational attainments?

This volume provides a theory of Singapore's economic development. With a coherent theory capable of explaining how Singapore got to where it is, the book analyses how the future might look like for the Singapore economy. With its forward-looking analysis, this book is valuable to students as it weaves macroeconomic data together with growth theory and highlights the interaction of economic forces with social influences and political institutions. It also serves as a good reference for other emerging economies that, like Singapore, want to avoid the middle-income trap, and for researchers interested in analysing the economic possibilities for current and future Singaporeans.

• Preface
• About the Author
• Introduction:
  • What This Book is About
• The Aggregate Economy and Its Heterogeneity:
  • Four Things that Matter
  • What We Can Learn from the Data
  • Standard of Living
  • Jobs and Business Fluctuations
  • Wage Growth and Wage Inequality
• Finding Political Consensus to Embrace Economic Openness:
  • Economic Openness
  • Coping with Opportunism
  • Role of Government
  • Social Cohesion and Political Equilibrium
• Achieving Economic Justice:
  • Pitfalls, Fundamentals, and Choices
  • The Good Economy and the Good Life
• Epilogue
• Index

• This book develops a coherent framework that takes readers through the process of thinking through how Singapore's future standard of living, jobs, wages, and income inequalities could evolve
• Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan are peer economies among the four East Asian economies that successfully transited from relative poverty in the 1960s to relative prosperity today. While many accounts have been given of how they grew in the past few decades, where these economies are headed in the future is less studied. Yet, the circumstances facing these economies today are different. This book provides the necessary forward-looking analysis for one of these four economies — Singapore
• While this book adopts the tools of economic analysis, thus placing an emphasis on private incentives and market forces, it also highlights the interaction of economic forces with social influences and political institutions