Search Malaysia

Having had to do economic research on matters pertaining to Malaysia, I often get frustrated and disappointed by the lack of good academic papers on Malaysia. It makes understanding on any particular issue difficult and investigation tedious – to have a progressive and fruitful search for knowledge, we are suppose to stand on shoulders of giants. This is made worse by the fact there are very few avenues for papers to be published and disseminated (try to find a well-maintained, properly peer-reviewed Malaysia specific working paper series) and the fact that the paternalistic Government, despite all the grand master plans to have a knowledge economy, human capital development and yada yada, seems to be doing very little to encourage people to actually investigate on issues pertaining to economic and public policies. In fact, the opposite seems to be truer.

Try finding an article that systematically and objectively investigate the extent of market failure and the cost of inefficiency imposed by a grossly protective national automotive policy; or the success (or lack thereof) of the Bumiputera policies in achieving its dual objectives of poverty eradication and elimination of economic identification based on ethnicity; or the impact of the AP system; or the fiscal cost of having the automatic pricing mechanism in determining petrol prices; or the effects of toll roads on congestions, cost of driving and how they interface with existing roads and public transportation system; or the evolution of return to education through the decades of changes in the national education system; or the effect of mega-public sector investment projects on private sector investments; or … well, you get the point.

How is it possible to have good and honest debates on public policies when there are really no concrete studies to base your debates on? How do we know a policy works or not? How is a society going to progress if there are really no open, mature and sophisticated inquiries on issues that matter?

Anyway, I did a wholly unscientific, lazy and probably biased investigation into how we compare with others in terms of depth of academic maturity. This is what I did – I chose few countries and searched them on Google Scholar, and jotted down the number of hits (every hit should represent some form of academic work related to the search country) for each, using this variable as a proxy for academic maturity. This is what I found:

Regionally, I chose Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia as comparators. And surprise surprise, we have the lowest hits, at 379 thousand. Singapore has more than twice that. Thailand and Indonesia have 64% and 44% more hits.

Then, I chose the United States, United Kingdom and Europe, which should represent regions in which the frontier of knowledge is. Understandably, the results are vastly different. The States has more than 10.8 million hits, Europe 3.4 million and UK 1.6 million.

Then there are China and India, the hottest two countries in town for economists. Not adjusted to population, China has 4.5 million hits while India has 2.2 million. Commendable.

So why is this so? Why are we lacking in this area?

I offer two interrelated reasons, based on the core ingredients of a vibrant academic society, as a partial explanation:

1. Academicians

Malaysia is not lacking in intelligent citizens. What Malaysia lacks, however, is an incentive system that could turn talents into productive academicians. How are professors valued in our country in teaching and producing academic work? In universities, are academicians encouraged to have honest pursuits of knowledge, or are the existing incentives such that it is more advantageous to pursue other lesser objectives?

2. Universities

Universities are beacons of a knowledge-based society. How conducive are Malaysian universities in allowing freedom for academician in doing research? In turn, how independent are universities from politics pressure and propaganda? Are academicians restrained from actively pursuing research on wide-ranging, important but potentially sensitive issues? If they continue to do so, how severely are they punished? How are universities linked with the private sector in collaborations for research and development? How adequate are the infrastructures, from libraries (both virtual and physical) to reliable broad-band access, and funding? Are important statistics and information publicly (and easily) available?

Hmmm. Back to work.

Elanor