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
defined myth step towards understanding
Overcoming the myth that there is such a thing as an objectively defined 'free market' is the first step towards understanding capitalism.
ahead created federal frontier government people private result sector technology
Many people think that the U.S. is ahead in the frontier technology sectors as a result of private sector entrepreneurship. It's not. The U.S. federal government created all these sectors.
arthur conan koreans
I used to joke that I came to England - not to the U.S. where most Koreans go - because I like Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
country holiday mean
Above a certain level of income, the relative value of material consumption vis-a-vis leisure time is diminished, so earning a higher income at the cost of working longer hours may reduce the quality of your life. More importantly, the fact that the citizens of a country work longer than others in comparable countries does not necessarily mean that they like working longer hours. They may be compelled to work long hours, even if they actually want to take longer holidays.
development culture economic
Culture changes with economic development.
development foundation acquisition
The foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.
people good-man secret
[Good managers] know that people have 'good' sides and 'bad' sides and that the secret of good management is in magnifying the former and toning down the latter.
government development may
Low inflation and government prudence may be harmful for economic development.
environment economic currents
It's not just about the current economic environment. History shows that slashing budgets always leads to recession.
littles too-much corruption
Corruption exists because there is too much, not too little, market.
country giving-up technology
It takes time and experience to absorb new technologies, so technologically backward producers need a period of protection from international competition during this period of learning. Such protection is costly, because the country is giving up the chance to import better and cheaper products. However, it is a price that has to be paid if it wants to develop advanced industries.
sides regulators
History is on the side of the regulators.
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.