Throughout East Asia, the growth process and its sources are changing in a number of important respects, especially for middle- and high-income economies. Growth is increasingly coming from the strength of innovative activities in these economies rather than from factor accumulation as in the past. Such innovative activities--especially in producer services and the creative industries--are concentrated in high-tech clusters in globally linked cities.
Drawing on a wide range of literature and on interviews with firms, this book explores these issues with a focus on six East Asian cities: Bangkok, Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. It suggests how policies and institutions can induce and furnish an urban environment that supports innovative activities. A valuable resource for researchers, urban planners, urban geographers, and policy makers interested in East Asia, Post-Industrial East Asian Cities presents the latest findings on creative industries in East Asia and their effect on economic growth.

Throughout East Asia, the growth process and its sources are changing in a number of important respects, especially for middle- and high-income economies. Growth is increasingly coming from the strength of innovative activities in these economies rather than from factor accumulation as in the past. Such innovative activities2;especially in producer services and the creative industries2;are concentrated in high-tech clusters in globally linked cities.
Drawing on a wide range of literature and on interviews with firms, this book explores these issues with a focus on six East Asian cities: Bangkok, Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. It suggests how policies and institutions can induce and furnish an urban environment that supports innovative activities. A valuable resource for researchers, urban planners, urban geographers, and policy makers interested in East Asia, Post-Industrial East Asian Cities presents the latest findings on creative industries in East Asia and their effect on economic growth.

Although the relative size of the public sector has been much reduced worldwide since the early 1980s, it remains the dominant borrower from the banking system and responsible for the majority of the non-performing assets of banks. Drawing upon new firm-level survey data, this volume assesses how changes in the ownership structure of SOEs affect management, governance, innovation, and performance, comparing these SOEs to other types of firms in China. It also considers China's reform efforts against the experiences of other transition economies. The research reveals that the medium- and longer-term gains from privatization far outweigh costs of adjustment and that the precise mechanics of privatization have little effect on outcomes. The volume argues that privatization of large industrial SOEs and market-based consolidation of small- and medium-sized enterprises will be necessary to transform them into competitive and innovative world-class firms. Chapters include: China's Industrial System: Where is it, Where it Should be Headed, and Why; Reform in China, 1978-1997; The Accelerated Change in Enterprise Ownership, 1997-2003; Chinese Ownership Reform in the East European Mirror; Empirical Evidence on the Effect of SOE Reform in China; and Making Privatization Work.

Although the relative size of the public sector has been much reduced worldwide since the early 1980s, it remains the dominant borrower from the banking system and responsible for the majority of the non-performing assets of banks. Drawing upon new firm-level survey data, this volume assesses how changes in the ownership structure of SOEs affect management, governance, innovation, and performance, comparing these SOEs to other types of firms in China. It also considers China's reform efforts against the experiences of other transition economies. The research reveals that the medium- and longer-term gains from privatization far outweigh costs of adjustment and that the precise mechanics of privatization have little effect on outcomes. The volume argues that privatization of large industrial SOEs and market-based consolidation of small- and medium-sized enterprises will be necessary to transform them into competitive and innovative world-class firms. Chapters include: China's Industrial System: Where is it, Where it Should be Headed, and Why; Reform in China, 1978-1997; The Accelerated Change in Enterprise Ownership, 1997-2003; Chinese Ownership Reform in the East European Mirror; Empirical Evidence on the Effect of SOE Reform in China; and Making Privatization Work.

This book evaluates the evolution of regulatory policy in advanced countries and discusses how, due to globalization, policy changes in one country have a knock-on effect in others. Separated in two parts, the first half focuses on policy in developed countries and regulatory diffusion from Europe to Asia. The second part looks at the business impact of policy developments in a number of Southeast Asian countries. Key chapters discuss Thailand's response to EU chemical regulations, the diffusion of private food standards, and the effect of chemical safety standards in Malaysia and Vietnam. These contributions are written by leading scholars in the field and the book is likely to be of interest to students, researchers and policy makers concerned with regulation changes in East Asia.

Countries worldwide are struggling to imitate the industrial prowess of the East Asian pacesetters, but growth accelerations have proven remarkably transient. Building a portfolio of tradable goods and services and steadily raising the level of investment in these activities, has generally defied the best policy efforts in particular, bringing investment ratios on par with East Asian averages has presented the greatest challenge. Hence the search is on for growth recipes not so tightly bound to investment, to manufacturing activities, and to the export of manufactured products. In casting around for such recipes validated by demonstrated results, the experience of economies which have relied more on other drivers of growth human capital and knowledge is highly attractive. Finland and Ireland are among the tiny band of small nations that grew rapidly for well over a decade by achieving the maximum mileage from an adequate investment in physical assets and by harnessing the potential of human capital and technologies. Singapore combined high investment with a comprehensive and complementary strategy of building high quality human and knowledge assets. This approach enabled the three countries to diversify much faster into higher tech manufactures and tradable services and profit from globalization. The approach adopted by these three countries may be of greater relevance in the highly competitive global environment of the early 21st century because it does not necessarily assume heroic levels of investment. Moreover, it may be better tailored to the opportunities for middle and lower middle income economies threatened by the middle income trap and seeking growth rates in the 6 percent range, and for the smaller, late starting, low income countries with youthful, rapidly increasing populations that need to grow at high single digit rates in order to create enough jobs and to double per capita incomes in 10 years."

Southeast Asian tiger economies feel threatened by competition from other countries and worry that their growth momentum might be flagging. Even though their growth rates are above the average for the world and for developing countries, they fall short of yesterday's economic performance. The underlying worry is that they presage the beginning of a downward trend, the harbingers of which are lower rates of investment, persistently low rates of total factor productivity and low levels of innovativeness. The South East Asian tigers' worries motivate three questions: First, are the tigers rightly threatened by a creeping economic sclerosis or what some observers are calling the "middle income trap"? Second, if the threat is real, what are the underlying causes? Third, are there ways of neutralizing the problems and at least maintaining if not raising the growth rates of the recent past? This book tackles these questions by means of a comparative analysis of the Southeast Asian tiger economies, centered on Malaysia. This analysis draws upon a comprehensive set of techniques and indicators to assess competitive pressures, gauge industrial and technological capabilities and to indicate the directions of industrial change in Southeast Asia could take.

With the competitiveness of firms in an open and integrated world environment increasingly reliant on technological capability, universities are being asked to take on a growing role in stimulating economic growth. Beyond imparting education, they are now viewed as sources of industrially valuable technical skills, innovations, and entrepreneurship. Developed and developing countries alike have made it a priority to realize this potential of universities to spur growth, a strategy that calls for coordinated policy actions. The distinguished contributors to 'How Universities Promote Economic Growth' examines the wealth of international experience on efforts to multiply links between universities and businesses. They offer valuable and succinct guidance on some of the most effective policy measures deployed by national and regional governments, firms and universities to enhance the contribution that tertiary institutions can make to economic change.

Although China's centrally planned economy is a little more than a shadow of its former self, the closely inter-linked reforms of the enterprise and banking sectors are still incomplete. The relative size of the state-owned enterprise sector has been much reduced, however, the sector remains the dominant borrower from the banking system and is responsible for the majority of bank non-performing assets. Thus in the interests of financial stability it is crucial to implement the remaining reform agenda. The accession to the WTO has also made it more urgent for China's most-dynamic state-owned enterprises and her banking industry to compete through innovation, continuing process upgrades, and active pursuit of strategies aimed at succeeding in global markets. In order to do so, not only do large state-owned industrial enterprises need to be privatized, but the government also needs to create the conditions that will result in market determined consolidation of small and medium size firms into entities with a core strength. 'Under New Ownership' explores the effects of ownership reform in China on the performance of reformed industrial state-owned enterprises, and proposes privatization as a course of action to truly transform these enterprises into world class firms which compete on the basis of sound strategy, effective organization, and innovation. It draws upon newly collected firm level survey data to assess changes in the ownership structure of state enterprises on management, governance, innovation, and performance relative to other types of firms in China. This title provides researchers, students, and policymakers interested in the Chinese economy with in depth information and analysis on key issues related to the reform of state-owned enterprises.

Industrial clusters in Silicon Valley, in Hsinchu Park, in Northern Italy, and around Cambridge, U.K. have captured the imagination of policymakers, researchers, city planners and business people. Where clusters take root, they can generate valuable spillovers, promote innovation, and create the critical industrial mass for sustained growth. For cities faced with the hallowing out of their industrial sectors and economic decline such as Kitakyushu in Japan, creating a cluster which would reverse the trends, is enormously attractive.By synthesizing the essential conditions and policies responsible for the dynamism and resilience of successful clusters, this volume delineates both the conditions which contributed to past successes, and also how the reading of this experience is being used to seed new clusters in Singapore, Bangalore and Seoul. The volume sheds fresh light on the promise of clusters, the challenges facing policymakers and the track record to date of progress with promising new starts.

Throughout East Asia, the growth process and its sources are changing in a number of important respects, especially for middle and higher income economies. Growth will increasingly come from the strength of innovative activities in these economies instead of factor accumulation as in the past. Such innovative activities, especially in producer services and the creative industries are concentrated in high-tech clusters in globally-linked cities. The development of such cities is influenced by ongoing structural changes and initiatives by governments and firms. A successful transition from export-oriented manufacturing to a service economy that is competitive and integrated with the global systems, will involve a reshaping of the urban landscape so that providers of business services and the creative industries perceive it to be value augmenting for their purposes and a basis for competitive advantage. The Creative Metropolis in East Asia explores these issues by drawing on a wide literature and interviews of firms and suggests how policies and institutions can induce and furnish an urban environment that supports innovative activities with a focus on four cities in East Asia: Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. This title provides researchers, students, urban planners, urban geographers, and policymakers interested in East Asia as well as other middle income countries with an in depth review and analysis of the role of high-tech manufacturing, creative industries and business services in urban economic growth.

In the coming decades, globalization will force East Asian countries to come to terms with a far more demanding global market environment. Their ability to capitalize on the opportunities inherent in this environment will rest in no small part on acquired technological capability and IT skills and on how East Asian firms enlarge the gains from participating in global production networks. Government macroeconomic policies and institution building activities will be vital for sustaining competitiveness and growth but the initiative of firms will be the critical factor in assuring that the future for East Asia is as bright as the past three decades. The experience of a number of economies points insistently towards the contribution of large firms to innovation, as well as the branding and marketing of products on a global scale. An environment that is conducive to the growth of national firms that can compete against the multi-national corporations on world markets, match their innovative capability, and vie with them in creating global production networks would be part and parcel of a development strategy pegged to technological advance. The papers in Global Production Networking and Technological Change in East Asia, by leading experts in their respective fields, present some of the latest findings on global production networks, and the evolution of technological capability.