Ha-Joon Chang

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at SOAS University of London

This study contributes to the growing debate surrounding the narrow and monolithic ideological discourse embedded in economics education and the increasing calls for a more pluralistic approach. Using an online randomized controlled experiment involving 2,735 economics students from 10 countries, we examine the manifestation of ideological and auth...

There exists a long-standing debate about the influence of ideology in economics. Surprisingly, however, there are very few studies that provide systematic empirical evidence on this critical issue. Using an online randomised controlled experiment involving 2,425 economists in 19 countries, we examine the effect of ideological bias among economists...

In this paper we identify two missing dimensions of the Human Capabilities Approach (HCA)—the collective and the productive—and in doing so we advance a ‘productionist’ perspective on development, centred around the idea of ‘collective productive capabilities’. Bringing production back to the core of the development agenda calls for an integration...

In this paper, we discuss the challenges and the opportunities faced by developing countries that want to join the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). We first point out that the current discourse on 4IR is often based on poor understanding of the true nature of the phenomenon. Emphasising that many of the so-called 4IR technologies have...

Production was at the heart of economics from the days of Classical economics. However, with the rise of Neoclassical economics in the late 19th century, production has lost its status as the ultimate interest of economics. Several opportunities for fruitful integration of alternative streams of economics research—Evolutionary, Structuralist and Ke...

Industrial policy is back at the centre stage of policy debate, while the world is undergoing dramatic transformations. This article contributes to the debate by developing a new theory of industrial policy, incorporating some issues that have been neglected so far and taking into account the recent changes in economic reality. The authors explore...

What if we had a government prepared to implement the policies that could radically change 21st-century Britain and improve people's lives? Social and economic policies are rarely communicated clearly to the public, but it's never been more important for citizens to understand and contribute to the debate around the country's future. In everyday la...

There exists a long-standing debate about the influence of ideology in economics. Surprisingly, however, there is no concrete empirical evidence to examine this critical issue. Using an online randomized controlled experiment involving economists in 19 countries, we examine the effect of ideological bias on views among economists. Participants were...

This article introduces the special issue Frontiers of Industrial Policy by assessing the recent academic and policy debates and pointing to the need for a renewed industrial policy agenda centred on the structure-institution-policy nexus. We argue that this agenda should be informed by historical studies revealing the context-specific dynamics of...

Industrial policy is back in the mainstream debates. The paper provides a long-term analytical perspective of the industrial policy debate, and it critically assesses the current mainstream phase of the debate in light of three fundamental theoretical insights that developed along several decades of industrial policy theory and practice. These are...

African countries are in the process of upgrading and promoting the development of higher-productivity sectors, including manufacturing and high-end services. One of the key elements is the need to expand the industrial sector, which provides opportunities for employment generation, integration and value addition for boosting export earnings and in...

Tax breaks for the wealthy were meant to trickle down through society and boost everyone. It didn't work, says Ha-Joon Chang

The present study reviews a diverse set of countries with the most successful industrial policy experiences since the Second World War – namely, the US, Germany, Japan, Italy, Finland, (South) Korea, Singapore, China, and Brazil – with a view to deriving lessons for the UK. In Section 1, we start by reviewing the current state of the manufacturin...

This article is a reply to the comments made on my target article, ‘Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy and History’, at the beginning of this issue.

The article tries to advance our understanding of institutional economics by critically examining the currently dominant discourse on institutions and economic development. First, I argue that the discourse suffers from a number of theoretical problems – its neglect of the causality running from development to institutions, its inability to see the...

This is the first in an occasional series of DPR Debates, designed to illuminate specific issues of international development policy. Each debate will bring together two well-known researchers or practitioners, giving them the opportunity, over three rounds, to test and challenge each other's ideas. The debates are intended to be robust but accessi...

This is the first in an occasional series of DPR Debates, designed to illuminate specific issues of international development policy. Each debate will bring together two well-known researchers or practitioners, giving them the opportunity, over three rounds, to test and challenge each other's ideas. The debates are intended to be robust but accessi...

This article reviews the histories of agricultural policy in 11 of today's developed countries between the late-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century and in 10 developing and transition economies since the mid-twentieth century. After discussing the theoretical limitations of the prevailing orthodoxy, the article discusses the history of a wide...

- In both developing and transition economies, microfinance has increasingly been positioned as one of the most important poverty reduction and local economic and social development policies. Its appeal is based on the widespread assumption that simply 'reaching the poor' with microcredit will automatically establish a sustainable economic and soci...

The dominant paradigms of economic development have created an artificial institutional division between spontaneous markets and instrumental states. Opposing policy agendas have evolved and remain entrenched. This article seeks to challenge both approaches by reconsidering the role of entrepreneurship in economic development. Adopting an evolution...

The volume Institutional Change and Economic Development fills some important gaps in our understanding of the relationship between institutional changes and economic development. It does so by developing new discourses on the 'technology of institution building' and by providing detailed case studies-historical and more recent-of institution build...

This United Nations Policy Note on State-Owned Enterprise Reform provides practical guidance on alternative policies to reform SOEs and manage natural resource rents. This Policy Note has been developed in cooperation with UN agencies, and has been officially reviewed by distinguished academics/ development specialists such as Jose Antonio Ocampo,...

Incl. bibl., index

The paper tries to improve our understanding on the role of institutions in development by critically examining the current orthodox discourse on institutions and highlighting some of its key problems. After discussing some definitional problems, the chapter examines a number of problems in the orthodox literature arising from the widespread failur...

This paper discusses how the theory on the role of institutions in development can be improved, by critically examining the current orthodox discourse on institutions. To understand the relationship between institutions and economic development, it is necessary to have some balance between institutional forms and functions, and to accept its multi-...

Long-range historical records suggest that the policy space a country possesses, exercises enormous influence on its ability to achieve economic development. Once the policy space started shrinking from the 1980s, the average growth rate of developing countries fell to half of what it was in the "bad old days" of import substitution. This shrinking...

This paper critically examines the role of industrial policy in the economic development of East Asian countries with a view to drawing lessons for other countries, especially European ones. It describes the evolution of industrial policies in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore and evaluates the East Asian industrial policy experience -in general...

The author says that plans to reduce industrial tariffs during the next round of World Trade Organization talks have greater consequences than plans to reduce agricultural trade restrictions. Do the developing nations fully understand what they are giving up? This development specialist says they had better wake up to the consequences.

This paper assesses the structural reform after the financial crisis in Korea by investigating its benefits and costs to the economy. It argues that Korea's rapid economic recovery in 1999–2000 was a Keynesian recovery, not a reform-led one. It also argues that, despite the fact that there has been a significant advancement in formal changes in ins...

This article analyses the complex interplay of various factors in the 'late marketisation' in China and Vietnam and the 'late industrialisation' in Korea, Taiwan and Japan. The article distinguishes the degree of 'comparative advantage-defying' and 'comparative advantage-following' strategies adopted, and thereby explains the different growth and t...

After discussing whether there should be global standards in institutions, the article shows that the so-called global institutions (GSIs) are not truly 'global' but institutions that are specific to the Anglo-American countries. The article then criticizes the arguments that the Anglo-American institutions will eventually become GSIs because of th...

This paper summarizes our new book, Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual (Chang and Grabel, 2004). It begins from the premise that the view that there is no alternative to neoliberal economic policies in developing countries is fundamentally and dangerously incorrect. The "no alternative" dictum has commonly been associated...

This article examines the key ethical questions in the design of labor immigration programs. We propose a two-dimensional matrix of ethical space that isolates a number of different ethical frameworks on the basis of the degree of consequentialism they allow and the moral standing they accord to noncitizens. We argue for the rejection of extreme et...

During the heady days of neo-liberal counter-revolution in the 1980s, the World Bank and the IMF prided themselves on not wasting their time on ‘soft’ things like social policy in designing their ‘structural adjustment programmes’. In the older, hardcore version of neo-liberal orthodoxy that had prevailed until the early 1990s, diverting resources...

This economist argues that the multilateral talks have for too long been stacked against the developing countries. For negotiations to continue, the developed states must concede that developing countries have a right to protect infant industries and that the negotiating process needs an overhaul to give the poorer countries a stronger voice.

This article introduces a new dimension in the debate on infant industry promotion by pointing out that, historically, the developed countries themselves did not develop on the basis of free trade policy and laissez-faire industrial policy that they currently recommend to, or even force upon, the developing countries. It first critically examines t...

Based on a historical survey of the experiences of the USA, the EU member states and the East Asian economies, the paper argues that during their early stages of development, now-developed countries systematically discriminated between domestic and foreign investors in their industrial policy. They have used a range of instruments to build up natio...

In this fascinating history of economic development, the author shows that, contrary to popular myth, the early development of both Britain and the United States depended on protective tariffs to a significant degree. Why is this history so widely ignored? asks the author.

This title is comprised of 19 commissioned articles which are mainly focused on the timely global issues of volatility in equity and foreign exchange markets and the regulatory scene in developed and emerging markets. The papers provide a cutting-edge overview of general issues regarding world capital markets, experience in developing countries, an...

When in 2001 Joseph Stiglitz won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences, along with two other economists, many rejoiced that market imperfections were at last getting some recognition. But Stiglitz's recent reputation has most to do with his rebellious attitudes at the World Bank. The author of our piece analyzes Stiglitz's major theoretical...

The paper criticises the currently dominant neo-liberal discourse on the role of the state and proposes an alternative approach that will allow us to overcome its shortcomings, especially its inadequate analyses of the role of institutions and politics. It argues that the central problem with the neo-liberal framework lies not in its excessively an...

The paper develops an analysis of the economic, political, and institutional conditions for successful design and implementation of technology policy in developing countries. After a brief introduction (Section I), we discuss contending economic theories of technological change and technology policy (Section 2). It is concluded that, despite many p...

As the interpretation of its economic ‘miracle’ has been, so the interpretation of the recent crisis in Korea remains highly controversial.1 Although there are many important issues which have been raised by the Korean crisis, such as exchange rate policy, labour market policy, and the architecture of the international financial system (Chang, 1998...

, Abstract We have analyzed the complex interplay of several issues regarding the "late marketization" in China, Mongolia and Vietnam and the "late industrialization" in Korea, Taiwan and Japan. First, we have distinguished the “comparative advantage-defying” and “comparative advantage-following” strategies, and were thereby able to explain the dif...

Introduction What is the appropriate role of the state? This has been one question that has constantly occupied economists for the last 2-3 centuries since the birth of the subject (for some excellent historical reviews, see Deane, 1989, and Shonfield, 1965). During this period, there have been a number of swings in the dominant opinion on the subj...

The article critically examines the current corporate reform agenda in Korea. We argue that the view behind this agenda misdiagnoses the problems with the chaebols and therefore is unlikely to adequately address their real problems, namely, over-investment and abuse of power. We then criticise various arguments that see the country's government-bus...

The paper critically examines the explanations of the Asian crisis which emphasize the role of national policies and institutions that allegedly created moral hazard by overprotecting the investors—industrial policy, crony capitalism, and government guarantees accorded to banks and industrial firms that are considered too important to fail. We also...

These economists say the Korean financial crisis was a watershed in the nation's history. It marked a decline in power of the industrialists in favor of financiers. The authors believe this may ultimately retard economic growth in Korea. T HE causes of the 1997 Korean crisis, together with those of the crises in other Asian countries, have been hot...

The article examines the three most contentious issues regarding the origins of and the solutions to the current Korean crisis—namely, financial liberalisation, industrial policy, and corporate governance. The authors argue that it was the dismantling of the traditional mechanisms of industrial policy and financial regulation, rather than the perpe...

Conventional explanations of rapid growth in East Asia have focused on the efficient allocation of resources resulting from market-led outward-oriented strategies. This study challenges that approach. East Asian success has centred around the accumulation dynamic both because of its direct importance to the growth process and also because of its cl...

Governance indicators are now widely used as tools for conducting development dialogue, allocating external assistance and influencing foreign direct investment. This paper argues that available governance indicators are not suitable for these purposes as they do not conceptualize governance and fail to capture how citizens perceive the governance...

The paper identifies three types of institutions that are particularly important for economic development - institutions for coordination and administration, institutions for learning and innovation, and institutions for income redistribution and social cohesion - and examines how they contributed to the development of different Asian countries. Wh...

The article is a critical commentary on the World Bank's analysis of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), as exemplified in its recently-published Report, Bureaucrats in Business. While noting the positive contributions made by the Report, the article criticises the World Bank's understanding of the issues involved in the management of large-scale enter...

The article provides a critical survey of the literature on the economics and politics of regulation. After some conceptual clarifications, the article surveys the evolution of perspectives on regulation during the post-Second World War period, emphasising especially the interactions between intellectual changes and real world economic and politica...

This article develops an ‘institutionalist’ theory of state intervention, especially in relation to the process of structural change. After critically examining the two dominant perspectives on state intervention, namely, welfare economics and neoliberalism, it develops an alternative theory which emphasizes the fundamental uncertainties and the co...

The article aims to provide some additional empirical support and theoretical consolidation for the emerging 'alternative' interpretation of the Korean developmental experience, which emphasizes the role of the state. After briefly reviewing some mainstream interpretations, it presents a detailed account of state intervention in Korea, where it is...

This paper investigates how information affect voting behaviour. There exist a large literature suggesting that uninformed voters can use informational shortcuts or cues to vote as if they were informed. This paper tests this hypothesis using unique Swedish individual survey data on the preferences of both politicians and voters. I find that uninfo...

This paper examines some of the main arguments relating to the effect of privatisation on efficiency. It is concerned with both narrow economic issues and wider political issues. After a critical examination of some theories, which assert that private ownership is intrinsically more efficient than public ownership, it is argued that for large scale...

Africa's Management in the 1990s and Beyond: Reconciling Indigenous and Transplanted Institutions. By Mamadou Dia. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1996. Pp.xii + 293. NP. ISBN 0 8213 3431 X A Land Without Gods: Process Theory, Maldevelopment and the Mexican Nahuas. By Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel Buckles. London: Zed Books, 1995. Pp.x + 374. £55...