This is a comprehensive survey of Singapore’s dominating regional role as provider of petroleum refining, blending, and storage services, exporter of refined petroleum products, port of call for bunker and jet fuels, and spot market for the Asia-Pacific petroleum trade. Substantively based on industry data sources, this book is conceived of as an initial step in a continued and independent research interest on one of the Pacific Basin’s most dynamic and strategic industries.

Existing accounts of East Asia’s meteoric growth and structural change has either been explained as one dictated essentially by markets with strong macroeconomic fundamentals, or a consequence of proactive governments. This book departs from such a dichotomy by examining inductively the drivers of the experiences. Given the evolutionary treatment of each economic good and service as different, this book examines technological catch up with a strong focus on the industries contributing significantly to the economic growth of the countries selected in Asia. The evidence produced supports the evolutionary logic of macro, meso and micro interactions between several institutions, depending on the actors involved, structural location and typology of taxonomies and trajectories. The book carefully picks out experiences from the populous economies of China, India and Indonesia, the high income economies of Korea and Taiwan, the middle income economies of Malaysia and Thailand, and the transitional least developed country of Myanmar. Chapters 1-7 of this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy.