ABSTRACT

While Malaysia’s economy is widely acknowledged as having the capacity to escape the middle-income trap and achieve highly-industrialised status, this potential has not been realised. One theoretical proposition why an economy remains mired in the middle-income trap is that the introduction of mechanisms to overcome this problem is hampered by political, not economic, matters. Malaysia serves as an interesting case to test this proposition because, after the 14th General Election (GE14) in 2018, it had a new government – the first time such a change had occurred in its history – that had pledged to institute the requisite economic restructurings and reform state–business relations in a highly mixed economy. This article traces the sources of Malaysia’s middle-income trap leading up to GE14, reviews the reform debates that occurred following this election, and assesses why the promised reforms were not considered before this new government unexpectedly fell in 2020.

摘要

虽然马来西亚的经济被广泛认为有能力摆脱中等收入陷阱并实现高度工业化，但这种潜力尚未实现。一个经济体为何仍陷于中等收入陷阱的一个理论命题是，克服这一问题的机制的引入受到政治而非经济问题的阻碍。马来西亚是检验这一提议的一个有趣案例，因为在 2018 年第 14 届大选（GE14）之后，它有了一个新政府——这是其历史上第一次发生这样的变化——承诺进行必要的经济重组并改革高度混合经济中的国企关系。这篇文章追溯了导致 GE14 的马来西亚中等收入陷阱的来源，