'Paradigms of development: The East Asian debate': A comment

Sanjaya Lall's contribution to the debate on the role of industrial policy in economic development (Oxford Development Studies, 24, pp. 111-131,1996) is criticized. Part of the argument concerns the nature of development experience in Hong Kong, where deindustrialization is not regarded as a sign of lack of industrial policy, as argued by Lall. More generally, the article contends that selective intervention is not necessarily the key to capturing the benefits of dynamic comparative advantage, that intervention costs can be large, and that governments can have difficulty in devising and implementing plans for the development of technological capability.