In the decades prior to the Asian
financial crisis, the Malaysian economy experienced rapid
growth and a significant structural transformation. It went
from an economy... Show More +
that relied on agriculture and commodities
to one dominated by manufacturing and services. Since then,
however, Malaysia's growth has slowed to a level well
below its key competitors in Asia, including the large
labor-surplus economies of China and India. The economy
seems to be caught in a middle-income trap, unable to remain
competitive as a high-volume, low-cost producer and unable
to move up the value chain and achieve rapid growth by
breaking into fast growing markets for knowledge, and
innovation-based products and services. The Malaysian
authorities have expressed their commitment to regain their
earlier growth and reposition their economy as a rapidly
growing, knowledge-based, high value-added and high income
economy. A key element of their strategy is to encourage
Malaysians to invest more of their savings at home, instead
of abroad. Equally important is the need to improve the
quality of that investment. As part of this effort, the
Economic Planning Unit (EPU) of the Prime Minister's
Department launched a second Malaysia Productivity and
Investment Climate Survey in 2007 (PICS-II) to assess
whether and how the investment environment had changed since
the first survey in 2002 (PICS-I). This report presents the
analytical results of the second survey, which covers nine
manufacturing industries and five selected business support
services industries. Show Less -
Type: Investment Climate Assessment (ICA)
Report#: 49137
Date: August 1, 2009
How can Penang upgrade and diversify its
economy? This paper addresses this question using a number
of methodologies that have been developed for assessing
competitiveness... Show More +
and identifying the direction of future
industrial evolution. The results show that although Penang
was successful in attracting foreign direct investment to
the electronics industry, this has not translated into a
deepening of industrial capabilities or the nurturing of
innovation capacity in Penang. No large Malaysian firms in
Penang have taken the lead in innovation and there is little
new entry by local firms, despite incentives provided by
local and national governments are generous. Universiti
Sains Malaysia, the principal university in Penang, is
contributing through provision of skills, and it is
beginning to multiply university industry linkages. However,
the universitys research activities are too limited and too
diffuse to significantly initiate innovation by local
industry. Under the current circumstances, and given its
relatively small size, Penang will have to try much harder
to strengthen its competitive advantage in its most
important industry -electronics- through actions that build
research capital. It will also have to increase its efforts
to develop the potential of other value-adding activities,
such as medical services and tourism. A strategy focused on
localization economies is likely to be the most feasible option. Show Less -
Type: Policy Research Working Paper
Report#: WPS4971
Date: June 1, 2009
Author:
Yusuf , Shahid ;
Nabeshima, Kaoru
The objective of this report is to
explore firm competitiveness, the investment climate, and
growth in Malaysia. This report is structured as follows.
The first two... Show More +
chapters provide an assessment of the
investment climate. The last two chapters examine how
productivity enhancing programs, skills and technology, have
performed in Malaysia. The diagnosis is based on the survey
data as well as on cross-country comparisons. Chapter 1
reports on the investment climate and firm performance in
the manufacturing sector. Chapter 2 presents the findings on
the investment climate and firm performance in the services
sector. Chapter 3 examines skills performance and the
contribution of training and education to skills
performance. Chapter 4 provides a diagnosis of the
technological capability of firms. This report also
identifies areas that require further work including
carrying out a detailed assessment of key elements of the
regulatory environment; and undertaking a larger firm level
survey to achieve a better assessment of the services sector
as a source of growth. Show Less -
Type: Investment Climate Assessment (ICA)
Report#: 26841
Date: June 30, 2005
Consideration of lifelong learning
extends the World Bank's traditional approach to
education, in which subsectors are looked at in isolation.
Three years ago, when... Show More +
he articulated the Comprehensive
Development Framework, World Bank President James Wolfensohn
referred explicitly to lifelong learning as a component of
what education means for poverty alleviation In 1995
"Priorities and Strategies for Education" (report
no. 14948) emphasized the need to look at the education
system in a more holistic manner. The 1999 "Education
Sector Strategy"(report no. 19631) discussed the role
of new technologies. The World Bank has just completed
important new policy work on higher education reforms as
well as a vision paper on the role of science and
technology. The current report is the Bank's first
attempt to lay out an analytical framework for understanding
the challenges of developing a lifelong learning system.
While the World Bank's involvement in lifelong
education is still at the conceptual stage, two new
projects-in Romania and Chile-have already been prepared to
address the need for continuing education and lifelong
learning. In the years to come more analytical work on
lifelong learning is expected, and the policy dialogue in
education will touch more and more on lifelong learning
issues. The Bank's lending program will involve
operations to support countries' efforts to transform
their education systems to reflect a lifelong learning
approach. This report provides a departure point for these
continuing discussions, providing a conceptual framework for
education-related lending activities reflecting the latest
knowledge and successful practices of planning and
implementing education for lifelong learning. It encourages
countries to look beyond traditional approaches to education
and training and to engage in a policy dialogue on the
pedagogical and economic consequence of lifelong learning. Show Less -
Type: Publication
Report#: 26001
Date: May 31, 2003
Inspired by the success of the pilot
study tour, the Africa Region embarked on an initiative to
build cross-regional partnership between East Africa and
South Asia seeking... Show More +
to integrate indigenous knowledge and
practices into Bank supported operations. The aim was to
leverage the experience of IK good practices from South Asia
into Bank supported projects in East Africa. This would also
help foster new partnerships for South-South dialogue,
cooperation and technical assistance. The focus was on
indigenous knowledge as it is a key element of the social
capital of the poor, assisting them in their struggle to
improve their livelihoods. For example, farmers have used
organic fertilizers to increase soil fertility in parts of
Asia and Africa for centuries; similarly, local healers have
used medicinal plants in India and Tanzania to treat common
human, and animal diseases. Many local organizations,
institutions, and communities have a wealth of knowledge of
IK practices. However, these practices are not disseminated
effectively because community-based organizations lack the
capacity to capture, document, validate and share them. Show Less -
Type: Brief
Report#: 25599
Date: April 30, 2003
The objective of the comparative study
is to determine how and when Consultative mechanisms (CMs)
can be useful adjuncts to economic reform efforts. With
regard to this... Show More +
study, on one hand, the authors have
attempted to provide a rich descriptive account of Malaysian
public-private dialogues, something so far lacking in
published materials, so as to provide operationally useful
information to Bank staff and other interested policy
practitioners. On the other hand, the authors have attempted
to provide a theoretical analysis of the key institutional
dynamics associated with these dialogues. In addition to
this study of Malaysia, the comparative project will
generate case studies of national and regional consultative
mechanisms in Ghana and Mexico, a review of the World Bank
experiences with CMs, and a summary report on the dynamics
of government-business consultative processes. In this
paper, one possible explanation which received little
attention is that cultural values unique to Malaysia, or to
parts of Asian more generally, might enable public-private
cooperation in manners unattainable in other parts of the world. Show Less -
Type: Working Paper (Numbered Series)
Report#: 49062
Date: September 1, 1999
Author:
Biddle, Jesse; Milor, Vedat;
This note presents the lessons from the
assessments that are likely to be most useful to country
directors, and task teams preparing new adjustment
operations. The five... Show More +
adjustment loans (two in Argentina, and
one each in Korea, Malaysia, and Russia) show that applying
basic lessons is not always straightforward, however, and,
sometimes involves making tradeoffs among Bank objectives.
It is stipulated policy objectives are more likely to be
achieved, if there is substantial borrower ownership. To
this end, support for new policies should be established,
towards generating broad political ownership, including
engaging key players in incoming administrations, to help
build ownership of reforms. Moreover, combined, the
Bank's country knowledge and global expertise, can
generate quality operations, that forge local partnerships,
draws on prior experience, and maintains a minimum knowledge
base. This is to say, setting priorities, and sequencing
reforms should be carefully included during the design
phase, with particular attention to avoid excessively broad
conditionality, which may reduce the probability of real
progress on key reforms. Show Less -
Type: Brief
Report#: 26710
Date: August 30, 1999
Author:
Morrow, Daniel;
The SAM for Malaysia addresses a number
of conceptual issues and their practical solution which do
not seem to have been treated elsewhere. This SAM is a large
one,... Show More +
with a level of detail more nearly that at which
national accounts are typically compiled, rather than the
more aggregated formats which are often adopted as a basis
for macro models or analysis. Malaysia's excellent set
of national accounts make possible an initial exploration of
the strengths and weaknesses of using market prices as the
basis for evaluation of commodity balances, leading to some
formal, algebraic treatment of the reasons for preferring
this approach to other conventions. An extensive household
survey, covering incomes, expenditures, and employment
issues, complements the national accounts in defining the
principle data sources. The major novelties of this SAM
include: (i) it has been necessary to define a two-region
SAM at the conceptual level; (ii) given the conceptual
framework, the approach is essentially to estimate a SAM for
East Malaysia and then to form the SAM for all Malaysia by
combining this with a matched matrix for the West Malaysia
states. These novelties should be of interest to others
concerned with SAM estimation methods. Show Less -
Type: Staff Working Paper
Report#: SWP646
Date: May 31, 1984
Author:
Pyatt, Graham ;
Round, Jeffery ;
Denes, Jane ;
DRD
The educational pay differential by
economic sector is of great importance because it links to
an array of theoretical, empirical and policy labour market
issues. For... Show More +
example, public-private pay differentials by
education can have an efficiency interpretation on the
utilisation of qualified labour in the economy. The purpose
of this article is to investigate empirically and interpret
the public versus private pay differential by education in
six countries using individual data. Three countries belong
to the industrialised group and the other three to the less
industrialised group. The individual data used have an
advantage over grouped data in that they permit
standardisation for other characteristics of the employees
in the two sectors (such as sex, age and education) and in
that they preserve personal variations in pay between
employees. The data base is presented in Appendix A and the
definition of the "public" and "private"
sectors in each country case is explained in Appendix B. In
order to avoid issues of sex discrimination the analysis
concentrates only on males. The second section of the
article presents the basic pay differentials, and the third
section gives the results of a regression standardisation
procedure. The final section discusses the findings. Show Less -
Type: Journal Article
Report#: REP345
Date: June 1, 1983
Author:
Psacharopoulos, George
Factors influencing the performance of
net farm income in families who adopted the double cropping
regime in Malaysia are analyzed in light of the Muda
Irrigation Project,... Show More +
which supplies off-season water to
approximately 250,000 acres of padi land in N.W. Malaysia.
From 1970, when water was first released, to 1975, when the
full feasible command area was served, most of the project
area's 50,000 farm families switched from single to
double cropping. This switch was accompanied by an extremely
rapid adoption of short-maturing, improved varieties of rice
and large increases in yield in both seasons. The result of
this technical change was an increase in padi production
from 384,721 tons in 1969 to 795,830 tons in 1974,
approximately 50 percent of the country's production.
There were also important changes in net farm income, labor
use, and output and factor prices. Factors related and
unrelated to the Muda project are found to have caused these changes. Show Less -
Type: Journal Article
Report#: REP238
Date: July 31, 1982
Author:
Goldman, R. ;
Squire, Lyn
This paper surveys a sample of issues
which government planners and policy makers face when
confronted with the need to supply growing amounts of meat
and dairy products... Show More +
to their domestic markets. Resolution of
these issues requires difficult policy choices between
import substitution and trade, between farmer income and
consumer welfare, between fiscal restraint and government
subsidies, and between policy intervention and market
forces. This paper addresses these policy trade-offs. It
also examines the validity of policy instruments such as
price controls in the context of a market economy, and
assesses organizational arrangements for marketing of
livestock products in the light of the experience
accumulated so far in developing countries. Finally, it
identifies research priorities that could guide the
development of trade, pricing, and marketing policies. The
discussion of trade and marketing issues is preceded by a
brief overview of production, consumption, and trade of
livestock and livestock products in Asian countries. Show Less -
Type: Working Paper (Numbered Series)
Report#: AGP45
Date: February 1, 1982
Author:
GIRARDOT - BERG , I ;
AGR
The manufacturing sector has contributed
substantially to Malaysia's impressive growth rate
during the past two decades, and it continues to play a
pivotal role. Nevertheless,... Show More +
future growth will depend on
developing a strategy that addresses the following issues
and constraints: (i) an ineffective protective system; (ii)
inefficient growth associated with import-substituting
activities; (iii) FTZ-oriented approach to
industrialization; (iv) employment that is concentrated in
three subsectors - electronics, textiles, and food and
beverage; (v) uneven regional dispersion; (vi) capital bias
of the incentives system; (vii) uncertainty about private
investment in manufacturing; and (viii) clarification of the
role of the public manufacturing sector. The proposed
strategy and changes in the incentives and policy framework
should help rationalize the protection mechanism and improve
the overall efficiency of the sector. Show Less -
Type: Pre-2003 Economic or Sector Report
Report#: 3187
Date: April 9, 1981
In this issue: Feature Article:
transport research in the World Bank, by Clell G. Harral.
Completed research: Short-run and long-run influences on
income distribution.... Show More +
Growth, employment, and the size
distribution of income. The labor markets in Malaysia.
Effects of health and nutrition standards on workers'
productivity. Evaluation methodology for education projects.
New research: A statistical analysis of the efficiency of
Indonesian manufacturing. National spatial policies. Health
and rural development in Nepal. Mass media and rural
development. A framework for agriculture sector analysis.
Better software for mathematical modeling: the general
algebraic modeling system. Econometric models of the supply
of perennials: a case study of rubber and tea in Sri Lanka.
Land tenure and labor markets in Indonesia. New and
forthcoming publications. Show Less -
Type: Newsletter
Report#: 37331
Date: May 1, 1980
Author:
Harral, Clell G.
An econometric model of the world market
for natural rubber is presented. The behavioral equations of
the model can be grouped into three major blocks: supply,
demand... Show More +
for all elastomers, and demand for natural rubber.
Individual supply equations were estimated for Malaysia,
Indonesia, and Thailand, the three major rubber-producing
countries. An additional equation captures the production
of rubber in all other countries. The equations provide for
adjustment by natural rubber users of their consumption in
response to changes in relative prices and technology and to
obtain estimates for short- and long-term elasticities in
the market share of natural rubber with respect to relative
prices. Simulation results show that a model captures that
past behavior of the natural rubber market quite well. Use
of the model to assess the future indicates that: (1)
economic growth in major rubber consuming countries is the
key variable for determining rubber demand; (2) the oil
crisis has altered the structure of elastomer demand so that
the link between GNP and elastomer demand is changing; and
(3) gradual reduction of historical income elasticity
coefficients points to a continuation in the strong market
for natural rubber. Show Less -
Type: Commodity Working Paper
Report#: SCP3
Date: January 31, 1979
Author:
Grilli, Enzo ;
Pollak, Peter ;
Helterline, Ray
An econometric model of household
production, consumption and labor supply behavior for a
semicommercial farm with a competitive labor market is
presented, using a Cobb-Douglas... Show More +
specification for the
production function and a modified linear expenditure
system. The model, estimated from primary, cross-sectional
Malaysian data, is used to analyze the impact of migration,
output price intervention and technological change on the
agricultural sector. In doing so, the wage rate is treated
as an endogenous variable to be determined by the
interaction of aggregate labor demand and supply curves
obtained from the estimated microfunctions. The policy
significance of an integrated treatment of production and
consumption decisions to the theory of the household is
demonstrated. Mathematical models are included. 21 references. Show Less -
Type: Journal Article
Report#: REP109
Date: January 31, 1979
Author:
BARNUM, H. ;
SQUIRE, L. ;
DEDER
A comparative analysis of farms that
have been double-cropped for one year and those that have
been double-cropped for two or more years provides
information on the... Show More +
effect of farm experience on allocational
and technical efficiency. Using basic input and output data
from six groupings of farmers, which were arranged in pairs
under the categories of farm size, tenancy status, and
double-cropping experience, a test was devised to assess
factor-neutral and factor-biased differences in technology.
Analysis of all study findings suggests that: (1) small and
large farms are equally economically efficient; (2) tenants
and owners are equally economically efficient; and (3)
continued double-cropping results in a neutral, downward
shift in the production function. Statistical data are
included. 11 references. Show Less -
Type: Journal Article
Report#: REP94
Date: July 31, 1978
Author:
BARNUM, H. ;
SQUIRE, L.
Three reports on social security
investment policies and resources allocation are presented.
The study of Malaysia's contractual savings
institutions indicate that they... Show More +
do not adversely affect
aggregate savings. Since the government's allocation in
the development budget conforms with socioeconomic
development more than that of the banking institutions, it
is concluded that contractual savings institutions have
contributed more toward development than would have occurred
in their absence. An examination of Singapore's and the
Philippines' investment policies regarding social
security indicates the relative merits of contrasting
allocative patterns. Singapore's channeling of huge
volumes of social security funds through government
securities has had a beneficial impact. In the Philippines,
the portfolio's emphasis on social security
institutions has limited this impact. Examination of
India's and Sri Lanka's policies shows that the
principal characteristic of the investment patterns of
social security institutions is the emphasis on government
securities. In Sri Lanka surplus funds are invested in
government securities, but in India these investments have
been more diversified. Numerous data tables are included. 11 references. Show Less -
Type: Journal Article
Report#: REP144
Date: April 30, 1978
Author:
SATO, K. ;
SHOME, P.
There are as yet no case studies
applying the Little-Mirrlees (LM) method to projects in the
transportation sector. This paper reports on an experimental
attempt to... Show More +
apply the LM method to such a project. The
project appraised is a highway in West Malaysia. The plan of
this paper is as follows: Section 2 of the paper describes
the highway project in Malaysia; Section 3 discusses the
benefits and costs of the project; Section 4 briefly
discusses the LM method of project appraisal, and examines
some conceptual problems in applying the method to highway
projects. These are: (i) the valuation of time savings; and
(ii) the conversion to the LM numeraire of the consumer
surplus arising from generated traffic. The problems
associated with incorporating income distributional weights
are also considered; Section 5 derives all the shadow prices
needed to appraise the project by the LM method; the
standard conversion factor, the shadow price of land, the
shadow wage rate, the shadow prices for construction and
maintenence, and vehicle operating costs at shadow prices;
and Section 6 presents the results of the LM appraisal of
the project. It contains in addition a risk analysis for the appraisal. Show Less -
Type: Staff Working Paper
Report#: SWP213
Date: July 31, 1975
Author:
ANAND, S.
The bulk of the paper estimates the unit
costs of outputs of Malaysia's public medical care
services. Chief among these are various kinds of clinic
visits and hospital... Show More +
days. In the process the paper describes
the accounting system of the Ministry of Health and its
shortcomings in providing basic cost data. The paper also
describes the methodology for estimating the various unit
costs. Estimated are not only the recurrent costs authorized
through the annual budget, but also the cost of capital in
place, consisting of net rate of return and depreciation,
associated with providing the various outputs. The paper
discusses in detail some of the conceptual issues in
deriving the various costs; e.g. the treatment of cost not
clearly allocable by specific outputs, and briefly compares
Malaysian costs with those of Tunisia. It also presents a
comprehensive description of the public system of health care. Show Less -
Type: Staff Working Paper
Report#: SWP207
Date: June 30, 1975
Author:
HELLER, P.
Policy issues connected with tropical
hardwood trade in the Asia-Pacific region are examined.
During the 1970s, demand for tropical hardwoods will
increase by approximately... Show More +
six percent annually. Export
earnings could increase at an average annual rate of 11 to
12 percent during the 1970s. These increased earnings will
result from increased log prices, increased export volumes,
and increased value of exports by increasing the proportion
of processed products. Although the Philippines and Malaysia
have well established wood processing industries, more than
80 percent of the tropical hardwood exports are still in log
form. Wood processing is an ideal vehicle for accelerating
the industrialization of the exporting countries. Developing
countries should discourage primary wood processing by
reducing the tariff barriers to imports of processed wood
and encourage specialization in the most sophisticated wood
products, thus upgrading their wood processing industries.
Foreign investment opportunities are available in
infrastructure, primary and secondary wood processing, fast
growing forestry plantations, pulp and paper projects, and
forestry education. Another possible investment strategy
would be to exploit currently inaccessible tropical hardwood resources. Show Less -
Type: Working Paper (Numbered Series)
Report#: OCP17
Date: January 31, 1974
Author:
Takeuchi, K.
