The Economic Growth of Singapore: Trade and Development in the Twentieth Century

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Cambridge University Press, Aug 13, 1997 - Business & Economics - 496 pages
This book provides a comprehensive overview of the economic development of Singapore, easily the leading commercial and financial centre in Southeast Asia throughout the twentieth century. This development has been based on a strategic location at the crossroads of Asia, a free trade economy, and a dynamic entrepreneurial tradition. Initial twentieth-century economic success was linked to a group of legendary Chinese entrepreneurs, but by mid-century independent Singapore looked to multinational enterprise to deliver economic growth. Nonetheless exports of manufactures accounted for only part of Singaporean expansion, and by the 1980s Singapore was a major international financial centre and leading world exporter of commercial services. Throughout this study Dr Huff assesses the interaction of government policy and market forces, and places the transformation of the Singaporean economy in the context of both development theory and experience elsewhere in East Asia.
 

Contents

List of figures
ix
List of tables
x
Preface and acknowledgements
xv
Abbreviations and conventions
xviii
Geographical definitions
xx
Introduction
1
Patterns in the economic development of Singapore 18701990
7
Singapore in the late nineteenth century
43
Rubber boom and spread of a twentieth century staple
180
Rubber industrialization and the development of Chinese banking
208
Petroleum and tin the twentiethcentury boom commodity and a staple in decline
236
The distribution of manufactured imports
257
The staple port resurgent development to 1959
273
Markets government and growth 19601990
299
Conclusion
361
Appendix tables
372

Trade finance and development
71
Oceangoing shipping the port and regional transport
120
Immigration population and employment
150
Bibliography
417
Index
447
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