Chang Ha-Joon

Quotes

1. Global economic competition is a game of unequal players … Consequently, it is only fair that we 'tilt the playing field' in favour of the weaker countries. In practice, this means allowing them to protect and subsidize their producers more vigorously and to put stricter regulations on foreign investment. These countries should also be allowed to protect intellectual property rights less stringently so that they can more actively 'borrow' ideas from more advanced countries.

   p. 219

2. 

   Democracy is acceptable to neo-liberals only in so far as it does not contradict the free market.

   p. 176

3. 

   Rich countries have 'kicked away the ladder' by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. Already established countries do not want more competitors emerging through the nationalistic policies they themselves successfully used in the past.

   p. 61

4. 

   [M]ost economists were caught completely by surprise by the 2008 global financial crisis. ...[T]hey have not been able to come up with solutions to the ongoing aftermaths ...[E]conomics seems to suffer from a serious case of megalomania—how can a subject that cannot... explain its own area... claim to explain (almost) everything?

5. 

   [E]conomics can never be a science in the sense that physics or chemistry is. There are many different types of economic theory, each emphasizing different aspects of a complex reality, making different moral and political value judgments and drawing different conclusions. ...[E]conomic theories constantly fail to predict real-world developments... not least because human beings have... free will, unlike chemical molecules or [other] physical objects.

6. 

   Inflation is bad for growth—this has become one of the most widely accepted economic nostrums of our age. But see how you feel about it after digesting the following piece of information.

   During the 1960s and the 1970s, Brazil's average inflation rate was 42% a year. Despite this, Brazil was one of the fastest growing economies in the world for those two decades—its per capita income grew at 4.5% a year during this period. In contrast, between 1996 and 2005, during which time Brazil embraced the neo-liberal orthodoxy, especially in relation to macroeconomic policy, its inflation rate averaged a much lower 7.1% a year. But during this period, per capita income in Brazil grew at only 1.3% a year.

   If you are not entirely persuaded by the Brazilian case—understandable, given that hyperinflation went side by side with low growth in the 1980s and the early 1990s—how about this? During its 'miracle' years, when its economy was growing at 7% a year in per capita terms, Korea had inflation rates close to 20%-17.4% in the 1960s and 19.8% in the 1970s. These were rates higher than those found in several Latin American countries ... Are you still convinced that inflation is incompatible with economic success?

   p. 149

7. 

   Democracy and markets are both fundamental building blocks for a decent society. But they clash at a fundamental level. We need to balance them.

   p. 174

8. 

   The Korean economic miracle was the result of a clever and pragmatic mixture of market incentives and state direction.

   p. 15

That’s all the quotes.

8 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more