Accumulation, Coordination, and the Limits of Emulation: A Systematic Review of Singapore's Economic Transformation and Its Transferability to Developing Southeast Asia

Abstract

Singapore is routinely invoked as a model for developing economies in Southeast Asia, yet the evidence behind specific claims about its transformation is rarely examined as a body. This PRISMA 2020-guided systematic review synthesises research on the mechanisms behind Singapore's post-1965 transformation, the strength of the evidence, and the conditions that constrain transfer. Searches of SciSpace and Google Scholar yielded 1,185 unique records, of which 1,000 were screened using large language model-assisted scoring against eight criteria. Because the additive scoring rule excluded several seminal studies, all records within 0.5 points of the threshold were re-screened under a pre-specified domain-specific rule, and growth-accounting studies were added through citation searching. The final sample comprises 50 studies published between 1980 and 2024, graded into three evidence tiers. Growth up to the late 1980s was predominantly accumulation-driven under conventional growth accounting, with total factor productivity contributing little or nothing, although the size of the shortfall depends on how market imperfections are measured. A capable, coordinating state mobilised saving, foreign direct investment, and skills at exceptional speed, but evaluations show that its interventions were not uniformly successful. Foreign direct investment drove rapid structural change while generating limited spillovers to local firms, and innovation inputs, largely foreign-owned, have grown faster than measurable returns. Documented costs include dependence on foreign labour, weak local entrepreneurship, and distributional strains. Transferability remains the weakest strand of evidence: coordination capabilities, notably the alignment of skills policy with investment, appear more portable than instruments such as compulsory saving or frontier-research targeting. For the Philippines and other ASEAN economies, the evidence supports adaptation sequenced to state capacity rather than replication. The re-screen left the direction of every conclusion unchanged while strengthening most of them.