ABSTRACT
The appropriate role of the state is a topic that has generated one of the most heated debates among economists as well as other social scientists. In interpreting the developmental experience of East Asian economies, it has also been at the center of controversies, dividing researchers broadly into “free marketeers” or “statists”, in which the former emphasized the role of the free market while the latter stressed that of the developmental state in making the East Asian miracle (refer to World Bank 1993; Lall 1994; Fishlow et al. 1996; Chang 2001).
