Chang Ha-Joon

Quotes

1. ECONOMICS COCKTAILS. Ingredients: Austrian, Behaviouralist, Classical, Developmentalist, Institutionalist, Keynesian, Marxist, Neoclassical and Schumpeterian. [...] Health warning: On no account drink only one ingredient – liable to lead to tunnel vision, arrogance and possibly brain death.

2. 

   Money is a symbol of what others in your society owe you, or your claim on particular amounts of the society's resources.

   How money and other financial claims... are created, sold and bought is... . ...[C]laims ...a lot of economics is (or should be) about those.

3. 

   [T]he realm of production... has been... neglected since the Neoclassical school... emphasis on exchange and consumption, became dominant in the 1960s. ...[P]roduction is a lot more than combining ...abstract quanta called labour and capital ...how the is physically organized, how to control the workers or deal with trade unions, how to... improve the technologies used through research. ...[P]roduction is the ultimate foundation of any economy. ...[Its] changes ...usually have been the most powerful sources of social change.

4. 

   [T]o understand jobs... we need to know about skills, technological innovation and . ...Wages and working conditions are... affected by 'political' decisions... the boundary between economics and politics is blurry...

5. 

   When Becker titled... The Economic Approach to Human Behaviour, he was... declaring... economics is about everything.

6. 

   Markets have a strong tendency to reinforce the status quo. The free market dictates that countries stick to what they are already good at. Stated bluntly, this means that poor countries are supposed to continue with their current engagement in low-productivity activities. But their engagement in those activities is exactly what makes them poor. If they want to leave poverty behind, they have to defy the market and do the more difficult things that bring them higher incomes—there are no two ways about it.

   p. 210

7. 

   [E]very responsible citizen needs to learn some economics... such... that one becomes aware of the different types of... arguments... and... judge which... makes most sense in a given... circumstance... in light of... moral values and political goals...

8. 

   [J]argons that facilitate communication within the profession makes its communication with outsiders more difficult. ...[A]ll technical professions have an incentive to make themselves look more complicated... so they can justify the high fees... for their services.

9. 

   Countries are poor not because their people are lazy; their people are 'lazy' because they are poor.

   p. 18

10. 

    Manufacturing is the most important...route to prosperity.

    p. 215

11. 

    There is a big logical jump between acknowledging the destructive nature of and arguing that the lower the rate of inflation, the better.

    p. 150

12. 

    Ricardo's theory is absolutely right—within its narrow confines. His theory correctly says that, accepting their current levels of technology as given, it is better for countries to specialize in things that they are relatively better at. One cannot argue with that. His theory fails when a country wants to acquire more advanced technologies—that is, when it wants to develop its economy. 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. Ricardo's theory is, thus seen, for those who accept the status quo but not for those who want to change it.

    p. 47