Malaysia's Development Challenges Graduating from the Middle Routledge Malaysian Studies Series

This book examines the various economic, political and developmental policy challenges that Malaysia faces in her shift from a middle income to high-income economy. This issue is of great interest to academics, policy makers and development practitioners in the developing world, particularly in middle-income economies where there is a widespread concern about the challenges of managing such a transition.

Malaysia is one of the developing world's greatest success stories. The book argues that as one of the developing world's most open economies, with a reputation for prudent macroeconomic management, Malaysia has achieved consistent growth since independence. It has moved from a largely resource-based economy to a multinational-led, export-oriented, industrial economy. Despite this success, Malaysia, like other developing countries, is currently at a crossroads in its development strategy; it is in danger of being unable to graduate to the level of more advanced economies - such as Korea, Taiwan and Singapore - but with the basis of its success at risk from competition from efficient, lower-wage countries - such as China, India and Vietnam. Moreover, there are new threats to the political stability and affirmative action programmes which have successfully held together a very racially diverse population.

1. Malaysian Economic Development: Looking Backward and Forward 2. Political Challenges in Economic Upgrading: Malaysia Compared with South Korea and Taiwan 3. The Politics and Policies of Corporate Development: Race, Rents and Redistribution in Malaysia 4. The Malaysian Economy During Three Crises 5. Monetary Policy and Financial Sector Development 6. Public Sector Resource Management 7. Microeconomic Reform in Malaysia 8. Services Liberalization: The Need for Complementary Policies9. Is Malaysia’s Electronics Industry Moving up the Value Chain? 10. The Crisis in Eucation11. Poverty Eradication and Income Distribution 12. Demographic and Labour Force Dynamics 13. Shifting the Policy Goal from Environment to Sustainable Development

Hal Hill is the H.W. Arndt Professor of Southeast Asian Economies in the Department of Economics, Australian National University.