While acknowledging the importance of human resource development, this study focuses on the non-human resource structural policies to increase an economy’s productive capacity. Many reports have been written on human resource development policies. In APEC alone, the Knowledge Based Economy (KBE) study produced last year, some of the forthcoming two- year projects associated with this one-year project (all under the umbrella of the “New Economy and APEC”), and other task forces within APEC are explicitly focused on it. Consequently, we will not compete with that work here.
Moreover, it is the responsibility of policymakers to focus on getting the structural policy dimension right so that the conditions for robust human resource development will be in place. Without good structural policies, skilled and flexible people will migrate to environments where their abilities are allowed to shine. Without good structural policies that create a robust domestic environment, domestic firms will see little value in investing in human resource development. Without good structural policies that underpin solid economic growth, the government will be starved for financial resources to support human resource development.
Thus human resource development and human resource deployment depend on the structural policy fundamentals that create a dynamic environment. In this regard, from the OECD: Policies that engage ICT, human capital, innovation and entrepreneurship … are likely to bear the most fruit over the longer terms. But to have any chance of succeeding in these areas, government must ensure that the fundamentals –macroeconomic stability, openness and competition, as well as economic and social institutions—are working.
6 As important as they are as the foundation of strong economic performance, the policy fundamentals that will be discussed are not ends in themselves, but rather give rise to intermediate characteristics such as the four that were the focus of the Knowledge Based Economy (KBE) study presented in 2000 for APEC Ministers. We turn first to review these intermediate characteristics, before digging deeper to the fundamental structural policies that underpin them. The Knowledge-Based Economy and the New Economy In 2000 the APEC Economic Committee, in partnership with organizations in member economies, analyzed the underpinnings of the knowledge-based economy (KBE).
This work concluded that four dimensions characterize KBEs and are largely responsible for the strong economic performance of some economies over the last few decades. The absence of one or more of these factors, the report concluded, explained cases of lower levels of economic development over the period. The four dimensions deduced are that (from the KBE report summary): 6 OECD (2001), The New Economy; Beyond the Hype Executive Summary, pp. 8. Emphasis added. - 12-