Ha-Joon Chang

Ha-Joon Chang

Ha-Joon Chang was born on October 7th, 1963 and is currently 61 years old. Ha-Joon Chang was born in Seoul, South Korea. Chang attended Seoul National University where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and the where he received an MPhil and a PhD.

Ha-Joon Chang is an economist from South Korea who is known for his views on mainstream economic theories and his push for the adoption of alternative development strategies.

Chang’s career in academia began in 1990 at the University of Cambridge, where he taught at the faculty of the Department of Economics for more than thirty years. In 2022, he got a job at the University of London and taught at the School of African and Oriental Studies as a Research Professor.

During his many years in academia, Chang specialized in development and institutional economics and was a vocal critic of neoliberal policies, especially the concept of free market capitalism. Ha-Joon believes that the model is not the one-size-fits-all solution it has always been touted to be.

Outside of academia, Chang has worked as a consultant for various agencies of the United Nations, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank. Over the years, he has been working as an economist, and he has won many awards, including the Wassily Leontief Prize and the Gunnar Myrdal Prize.

Ha-Joon Chang’s critical insights and accessible writing style have made his works popular among the general populace and scholars. This has made Chang develop a solid reputation as a leading thinker, particularly in the field of developmental economics.

Chang published his most popular work 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. In the work, he offers a critique of free market ideology through 23 insights challenging traditional economic wisdom.

He asserts that markets are shaped by institutional and political institutions and are never inherently free. He argues that unregulated capitalism is what results in instability and inequality, hence the need for regulation, social welfare, and intervention to drive sustainable development.
He advocates for a more balanced approach that is all about institutional frameworks and historical context to shape economic outcomes, over letting the market dictate everything.

The Political Economy of Industrial Policy is a work that Ha-Joon Chang published in 1995. Yet again, he advocates for strategic intervention by the state to drive economic development.

Chang draws on the experiences of countries such as South Korea and Japan, which made use of political will and deliberate government policiessuch a targeted investments, tariffs, and subsidies, to grow their emerging industries.

He makes use of insights from theories of technical progress, institutional economics, and political economy to offer a comprehensive analysis of why the state needs to be at the forefront of guiding industrial transformation.

Yet again in 1995, Chang published The Transformation of the Communist Economies, in which he explores the approaches to transitioning from centrally planned economies to market-based economies.

Chang argues that democratization and rapid liberalization are not universally beneficial and will often result in bad outcomes. He puts forth the case that state involvement, institutional development, and gradual reforms adopted by cautious nations achieve more favorable results.

Ha-Joon Chang: Awards & Accolades

Chang's book, Economics: The User's Guide was nominated for the Goodreads Awards, Best Business Books, in 2014.

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Ha-Joon Chang: F.A.Q