As South Korea shows, active participation in international trade does not require free trade. Indeed, had South Korea pursued free trade and not promoted infant industries, it would not have become a major trading nation. It would still be exporting… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
“In no country does the average income give the right picture of how people live but in a country with higher inequality it is likely to be particularly misleading. Given that the US has by far the most unequal distribution of income among the rich countries, we can safely guess that the US per capita income overstates the actual living… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share
Sometimes people with strong ideology, whether left-wing or right-wing, refuse to do something simply because they believe it is wrong, when doing it actually… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
Indeed, willingness to challenge professional economists and other experts is a foundation stone of democracy. If all we have to do is to listen… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
If we are really serious about preventing another crisis like the 2008 meltdown we should simply ban complex financial instruments, unless they can be… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
“Harry S. Truman, in his typical no-nonsense style, once said that ‘An expert is someone who doesn’t want to learn anything new, because then… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
Equality of opportunity is meaningless for those who do not have the capabilities to take advantage of it. — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
The higher education system in these countries (US, Korea etc) has become like a theatre in which some people decided to stand to get… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share Image
“Joseph Schumpeter emphasized that all analysis in economics is preceded by a pre-analytical cognitive act, called vision, in which the analyst ‘visualise[s] a distinct set of coherent phenomena as a worth-while object of [his] analytic efforts’. He pointed out that ‘this vision is ideological almost by definition’, as ‘the way in which we see things can hardly be distinguished from… — Ha-Joon Chang Copy Share
