Collected Essays on Taiwan's Economic Development

Since the mid-1960s, a large number of academic papers and books from Dr. Chi Schive have explored factors underlying the successful story of Taiwan. To begin with, how did an agriculture-dominated economy transfer into a major world factory of light manufactured products in the 1960s and IT products in the 1990s? How did a highly closed and inward-looking economy turn into an open and trade- dependent one? How did the Taiwan economy take up each challenge, including the two oil crises in the 1970s, the sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar in the second half of the 1980s, and the 1997 Asian financial crisis? The contents are arranged around five topics. In the first part, they are reviews of Taiwan’s economic development in general, and the solving of its Dutch disease problem taking place in the mid 1980’s. The second part covers trade issues such as trade patterns and trends. The third part deals with Taiwan’s industrial development. The fourth part of four DFI-related papers discusses the determinants, technology transfer and linkage effects of DFI. Lastly, it is on the changing competitiveness and market share of Taiwan’s SMEs, and how they survived the Asia crisis.