Since the end of the Second World War, Taiwan has transformed in around 60 years time from a farmland to a high tech industrial economy. This book examines entrepreneurship, innovative systems and government policies in Taiwan.

Within thirty years of its humble beginnings, Taiwan was listed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as one of ten newly industrialized countries (NICs). This book charts how and why such growth took place, and discusses areas of Taiwan's experience that might be useful in helping other countries achieve economic growth and improve their living standards.The second edition includes additional chapters and updated information and statistics.The author, one of the chief architects of Taiwan's economic development, worked with the government for forty years. Here, he draws on his extensive experience. He has held important positions such as Economics Minister, Finance Minister, and Minister without Portfolio dealing with, among other inter-ministerial problems, the Science and Technology Program. Presently, he is the Senior Advisor to the President. He has been involved in the development of economic, fiscal, monetary, industrial, international trade, manpower, science and technology policies.

This book tells the story of Taiwan’s economic revolution—how Taiwan transformed itself from a planned economy into a market economy between 1949 and 1965. The authors posit that it was the Kuomintang Government's endorsement of property rights reform and institutional change that enabled Taiwan to transform from an impoverished command economy to one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The book gives special attention to how a small group of political and economic leaders began adopting the new ideas and beliefs that created the vision that enabled them to embrace institutional and organizational innovations, actions which led to the formation of the new market economy. Using first-hand interview material with key government officials from the period, and analyses of hitherto unused Chinese-language archives including: the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek, Kuomintang party archives, and personal papers of Kuomintang leaders, as well as newspaper and journal articles published in Taiwan between 1949 and 1965, this book is both empirically rich, and gives the reader insights into Taiwan's developmental experience and the direction in which, under different circumstances, China's post-war expansion might have proceeded. Taiwan's Economic Transition will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the economic and political history and development of Taiwan. More broadly it will also appeal to scholars and students of China's historical and contemporary development, Asian economics, and Asian studies.

This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.

Taiwan's Development Experience: Lessons on Roles of Government and Market scrutinizes the main features of the Taiwanese development experience under five interrelated themes and domains: Outward-orientation vs. inward-orientation; Sources of growth; Dynamic balanced growth process: the interaction between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors; The role of government in the transition to a more market-oriented economy; and The potential transferability of the Taiwanese development experience to developing countries. In addition to highlighting the essential contributions of papers, the Editors also bring out the views and contributions, under each of the above headings, of two distinguished former Cornell University colleagues who are honored at the sponsoring conference - T.C. Liu and S.C. Tsiang.