Ha-Joon Chang
Ha-Joon Chang
Ha-Joon Changis a South Korean institutional economist specialising in development economics. Currently a reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge, Chang is the author of several widely discussed policy books, most notably Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective. Chang was ranked by Prospect magazine as one of the top 20 World Thinkers in 2013...
NationalitySouth Korean
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth7 October 1963
real unique keys
All the alleged key causes of SOE [State-Owned Enterprise] inefficiency the principal-agent problem, the free-rider problem and the soft budget constraint are, while real, not unique to state-owned enterprises. Large private-sector firms with dispersed ownership also suffer from the principal-agent problem and the free-rider problem. So, in these two areas, forms of ownership do matter, but the critical divide is not between state and private ownership it is between concentrated and dispersed ownerships.
army technology innovation
The days are over when technology can be advanced in laboratories by individual scientists alone. Now you need an army of lawyers to negotiate the hazardous terrain of interlocking patents. Unless we find a solution to the problem of interlocking patents, the patent system may actually impede the very innovation it was designed to encourage.
country people lazy
Countries are poor not because their people are lazy; their people are 'lazy' because they are poor.
machines world internet
The washing machine changed the world more than the Internet.
choices looks failing
The free market doesn't exist. Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them.
corruption force
Corruption often exists because there are too many market forces, not too few.
block balance democracy
Democracy and markets are both fundamental building blocks for a decent society. But they clash at a fundamental level. We need to balance them.
democracy doe free-market
Democracy is acceptable to neo-liberals only in so far as it does not contradict the free market.
smart enough
We are not smart enough to leave things to the market.
needs financial financial-markets
Financial markets need to become less, not more, efficient.
arguing logical bigs
There is a big logical jump between acknowledging the destructive nature of hyperinflation and arguing that the lower the rate of inflation, the better.
free-market
There is no such thing as a free market.
economic form worst
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the other forms.
loyalty honesty self
Self-interest, to be sure, is one of the most important, but we have many other motives - honesty, self-respect, altruism, love, sympathy, faith, sense of duty, solidarity, loyalty, public-spiritedness, patriotism, and so on - that are sometimes even more important than self-seeking as the driver of our behaviors.