Introduction

Douglas B. Fuller
Additional contact information
Douglas B. Fuller: King’s College

A chapter in Innovation Policy and the Limits of Laissez-faire, 2010, pp 1-7 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In Free to Choose (1980), Milton and Rose Friedman hailed Hong Kong’s explosive growth in the immediate post-war decades as proof of the wisdom of laissez-faire. They wrote: In today’s world big government seems pervasive. We may well ask whether there exist any contemporaneous examples of societies that rely primarily on voluntary exchange through the market to organize their economic activity and in which government is limited to our four duties (Note: the four duties are protection from coercion, justice, provision of public goods, and protection of those who are not responsible adults). Perhaps the best example is Hong Kong — a speck of land next to Mainland China containing less than 400 square miles with a population of roughly 4.5 million people…. The density of populations is almost unbelievable — 14 times as many people per square mile as in Japan, 185 times as many as in the United States. Yet they enjoy one of the highest standards of living in all of Asia — second only to Japan and perhaps Singapore. Yet almost three decades after the Friedmans praised the obvious positive effects of Hong Kong’s laissez-faire policies (referred to in Hong Kong as the policy of positive non-intervention), the lackluster performance of Hong Kong’s knowledge economy over the intervening period calls these very same policies into question.

Keywords: Venture Capital; Pearl River Delta; Advanced Economy; Creative Industry; Venture Capital Investment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-30411-6_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230304116

DOI: 10.1057/9780230304116_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().