Singapore's State-guided Enterpreneurship: A Model for Transitition Economies?

This paper examines the rationale that active entrepreneurial engagement by the state is crucial for small, transitional economies for global competitiveness based on the assumption that the state has the wherewithal to support such competitiveness. While this view goes against the trend of popular and current thinking of free market economics of noninterventionism, persisting asymmetrical economies render scant evidence of a narrowing gap. A government’s role in promoting productivity and export development is not in dispute but it is the government playing the entrepreneur that is the issue. Using the Singaporean experience, this paper will consider whether emulating the ideology of state-guided entrepreneurship has any merit.