In the great academic debates about the political economy of development, we sometimes forget that the “state conditions” surrounding an economy can change markedly and that responses to these changes can determine the success or failure of a given economic model. Some of the better literature on East Asian developmental states has emphasized the importance of the timing of these responses for the successes we have witnessed, but, in general, this literature has been focused on phases of economic development characterized by technological catch-up. Less has been said about moving beyond catch-up, i.e., what do the successful East Asian developmental states do – in terms of technology policy – “for an encore?” For Joseph Wong, the answer to this question is that they “bet on biotech.” But he finds that in so doing they discover that the institutions of the political economy which served them so well during the catch-up phase are now sorely wanting.

In keeping with the title, Wong casts his analysis in the language of the wager, drawing on the language of decision-making in the face of risk and uncertainty. He usefully invokes the classical distinction between risk and uncertainty introduced by economist Frank Knight where risk is understood in terms of a probability distribution of “known unknowns” in contrast to the “unknown unknowns” characterized by “primary” uncertainty. Wong argues that the industrial upgrading during the technological catch-up phases in Korea, Taiwan and Singapore was characterized by strategies in which decision-makers could “…use existing information to estimate the likelihood of certain outcomes…” (p. 26) and then employ the resources of the state to mitigate the risks. However, in the promotion of biotechnology and other “cutting-edge frontiers of the knowledge economy (nanotechnology, advanced information technologies, and other science-based industries)” (p. 29), the state confronts fundamentally different challenges because of pervasive technological, commercial, and temporal uncertainties.

The bulk of the book is an exploration of how Korea, Taiwan and Singapore have attempted to manage these uncertainties. It is a story of significant challenges to the industrial policy apparatus of the three governments (chapter two), interesting continuities in industrial organization in which legacies from the catch-up period – big business dominance in Korea, small firms in Taiwan, MNCs in Singapore – come to characterize post-catch-up initiatives as well (chapter three). It is also a story of efforts to manage the news of disappointments and failures with bio-tech initiatives for publics which had been led to expect the flowering of new industries (chapter four), and the emergence of new regulatory institutions needed to deal with novel product safety and research ethics questions (chapter five). In essence, it is the story of new industrial policy aspirations running up against forms of complexity, stemming from multiple uncertainties, for which inherited policies and institutions are inappropriate.

This is a very nice book. It is empirically rich and theoretically informed. Wong weaves together his case material with sophisticated insights into the economic and psychological literatures on risk and uncertainty. Although it occupies only several pages towards the end of the book, his treatment of distinctive “heuristic biases in managing uncertainty” among the three political economies captures nicely both the theoretical importance of heuristics and the collective cognitive repertoires characteristic of the three societies in dealing with uncertainty.

Wong's study should appeal to specialists on East Asian politics and comparative political economy. But scholars working in science and technology policy studies will also find it of interest, as will generalists who are interested in the complex ways in which scientific discoveries, new technologies and social institutions interact to create diverse – and not so diverse – futures. The book is suitable for advanced undergraduate courses and graduate seminars in East Asian politics and political economy.

Although the book says little directly about the People's Republic of China, in its treatment of the generic problems of fostering science-based industry, there is much in it that in fact speaks to China's current efforts to find a new growth model by attempting to create an innovative society through the use of industrial policy.