Big business and urban congestion in Taiwan: The origins of small enterprise and regionally decentralized industry (respectively)

Two pillars of Taiwan's economy that are regarded as models for other developing countries to follow are small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and regional decentralization of industry. This paper suggests that the historical roots of both phenomena make the policies necessary to reproduce the Taiwan model elsewhere less straightforward than is typically supposed. By the mid-1960s the major factor behind regional decentralization was urban congestion. Big business seems to have been instrumental in the growth of SMEs.