[Talk] What Penang Can Learn from Albert Winsemius

Details

Date: 22nd July 2025 (Tuesday)

Time: 3 pm to 4.30 pm

Title: What Penang Can Learn from Albert Winsemius: The Dutch Connection to Singapore

Speaker: Professor Euston Quah

Moderator: Ms Ong Wooi Leng

Abstract

What can Penang Learn from Albert Winsemius: The Dutch Connection to Singapore

Singapore's success owes much to Dutch economist Dr. Albert Winsemius, whose economic strategies significantly shaped Singapore’s success for over 20 years from early 1960s to the 1980s. This talk reflects on his pragmatic yet ambitious strategies, and how his approach to industrialization, human capital development, and urban planning shaped Singapore into a globally competitive and liveable city. By revisiting Winsemius’ contributions from the compiled biographical account, expert reflections, and heritage insights, the presentation uncovers the distinctive characteristics of his policy-advising. Winsemius’ work was marked by a clear-eyed assessment of local conditions, a commitment to building institutional capacity, and a keen ability to match external models to internal realities. These qualities not only defined his guidance to Singapore but offer enduring relevance to other countries and city states such as Penang, which faces the dual challenge of sustaining economic dynamism while ensuring urban liveability and social cohesion. This talk aims to provide policymakers with insights into how the principles behind Singapore’s development can be adapted—not replicated—to position Penang as a resilient, competitive, and liveable city-region in the decades ahead.

Speaker's Biography

Professor Euston QUAH is Albert Winsemius Chair Professor of Economics, and Director, Economic Growth Centre (EGC) at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore and formerly, Head of Economics at NTU for 15 years. He transformed the Division of Economics from a relatively lesser-known entity into what is now well-regarded not only in Singapore but also globally recognised. NTU Economics has been consistently ranked internationally within the top 50 departments in recent years.Professor Quah’s academic career in NTU has also included several senior leadership positions. He chaired the then NTU School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vice-Chair of the Sustainable Earth Office, Chair of the Senate Committee on University Policies, and Member of the University Teaching Council. Prior to joining NTU, Professor Quah was Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Deputy Director of the Public Policy Programme (now called the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy), Deputy Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies, and headed the Department of Economics at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Along with these appointments, he is the only person to have headed the economics departments at both NUS and NTU.Professor Quah believes that economics must be relevant to the needs of society. He is an advisor to several ministries in Singapore, as well as overseas organisations including the Asian Development Bank in Manila, the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo as well as the World Bank, and Canadian organisations such as the International Development Research Council and the Canadian International Development Agency. He was a member of the Panel for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the Overseas Development Institute of London and has also served in Singapore as a Board of Trustees member of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, the Energy Market Authority, Energy Studies Institute at NUS, and the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore. He is presently on the Board of the Market Surveillance and Compliance Committee of the Energy Market Company, and a member of the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) since its inception in 2016, in addition to being on the Singapore Medical Council’s Complaints Committee , and on the Medical Ethics Board for the past decade. He has consulted for Genting International, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.Professor Quah is a prolific and well-cited writer, having published over 100 articles in refereed journals and lead opinion pieces in the media , and over 20 books with publishers such as Routledge, McGraw -Hill, Edward Elgar, Springer Nature, Prentice-Hall, Cengage ( previously Thompson, USA) and World Scientific. His many works on valuing and measuring household production gained a selection for inclusion by the International Library of Critical Writings in Economics in the UK and received favourable reviews in the Journal of Economic Literature, Economic Journal, and Journal of Labour Economics.He is also the author of the bestselling Asian edition of Gregory Mankiw’s leading textbook, Principles of Economics (now into its third edition in 2021), and the internationally known book, Cost-Benefit Analysis, now into its sixth edition in 2021. He also wears multiple hats as Editor of the Singapore Economic Review (a Social Sciences Citation Indexed journal), President of the Economic Society of Singapore, and member of the prestigious European Academy of Sciences and Arts. As of August 2023, Professor Quah was listed in Google Scholar Profiler as among the top 10 most highly cited university economists in cost-benefit analysis in the world. In 2020, Professor Quah was invited to give a keynote Talk as a plenary speaker to the US Society of Benefit -Cost Analysis . His book on Cost -Benefit Analysis (with E.J.Mishan) was listed as among the recommended works for reference in grant applications by the US Office of Management and Budget as well as by the US Department of Transportation.Professor Quah has been invited to give distinguished talks, and keynote addresses at conferences, and meetings hosted by Columbia University (Earth Institute), Princeton University, Zhejiang University, Fudan University, Kobe University, Kyoto University, Nagoya University, Korea University, Seoul National University, National Chengchi University and the Asian Development Bank Institute in addition to receiving a number of distinguished overseas accolades including a Visiting Hengyi Chair Professor at Zhejiang University, China, Distinguished Fellow at the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Eminent Visiting Professor at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, first Komai Fellow of the Hitachi Scholarship Foundation, Japan, and Distinguished Fellow of the Penang Institute, Malaysia. Most recently, Professor Quah was elected as the Distinguished Fellow of the International Engineering and Technology Institute (IETI) with a vast majority of votes for his outstanding, rigorous, insightful, and innovative contributions in the field of social sciences. Closer to home, he was also external economics reviewer to the economics programmes at the University of Malaya, the Universiti Sains Malaysia, and the Universiti Putra Malaysia. Professor Quah had also been a grant recipient and a research collaborator and co-principal investigator in projects with ETH Zurich , and Technical University of Munich-CREATE awarded by the National Research Foundation.Recognising Professor Quah’s outstanding contributions to NTU and society at large, NTU conferred him with the title of Albert Winsemius Chair Professor of Economics in 2019. In 2021, NTU celebrated its 30th anniversary year of its founding. Professor Quah’s book, Singapore 2065 was included in the university’s Commemorative book and Exhibition of the university’s milestones and achievements. Singapore 2065 was among the 50 items selected by a government panel and with feedback from the public that was buried in a time capsule at Gardens by the Bay for unearthing in the year 2065. He was awarded the Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 2020 during Singapore’s National Day Honours Awards for his significant contributions to Singapore and service to NTU.