Ha-Joon Chang

As someone from a developing country, I have a problem with rich countries thinking they can tell us anything, simply because they are giving money.

The invention of the printing press was one of the most important events in human history.

Contrary to what professional economists will typically tell you, economics is not a science. All economic theories have underlying political and ethical assumptions, which make it impossible to prove them right or wrong in the way we can with theories in physics or chemistry.

Gone are the days when the upper classes were terrified of the angry mob wanting to smash their skulls and confiscate their properties. Now their biggest enemy is the army of lazy bums, whose lifestyle of indolence and hedonism, financed by crippling taxes on the rich, is sucking the lifeblood out of the economy.

Why do tax havens exist? Because rich countries allow them to. If the U.S. came down on tax havens in the same way they come down on countries that trade with Iran and Cuba, we'd have no tax havens in the world.

I used to joke that I came to England - not to the U.S. where most Koreans go - because I like Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.

The truth is that the free movement of goods, people, and money that developed under British hegemony between 1870 and 1913 - the first episode of globalization - was made possible, in large part, by military might rather than market forces.

Free market economists frequently see minimum wage legislation as mere political intervention. However, there are decent economic theories which show that, under certain circumstances, minimum wages can be beneficial, as it makes workers more productive.

Very often, the judgments by ordinary citizens may be better than those by professional economists, being more rooted in reality and less narrowly focused.

Basically, the myth is that America has been founded on the free market; the government has done very little; it has thrived under free trade. But actually, if you look at the history, this is actually the country that has succeeded most with protectionist policies.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

People always think they're in the middle of a revolution while they tend not to realize the enormity of a change that has happened in the past. The telegraph was a revolution, but who looks at it that way these days? The telegraph sped up the transportation of messages over long distances by a huge factor.

The feeling of insecurity is inimical to our sense of wellbeing, as it causes anxiety and stress, which harms our physical and mental health. It is no surprise then that, according to some surveys, workers across the world value job security more highly than wages.

In the 19th century, a lot of people were against outlawing child labour, because to do so would be against the very foundations of a free market economy: 'These children want to work, these people want to employ them... what is your problem? It's not as if anyone has kidnapped them...'

People tend to think that numbers are quite objective, but numbers in economics are not like this. Some economists say they're like sausages: you don't know what they really are until you cut into them.

When I was growing up in South Korea in the '70s and early '80s, the country was too poor to buy original records. Everything was bootlegged.

When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago.

By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionised the structure of society.

I'm not an anti-capitalist, or anarchist. I want capitalism to work.

Democracy, despite its limitations, is in the end the only way to ensure that policies do not simply benefit the privileged few.

Economics should be defined in terms of what it is about. It should be about how people produce things, how people exchange them, how people earn income, how they pay taxes, how the government provides infrastructure with tax revenue, and how it conducts monetary policy. The subject has to be defined in terms of the object of inquiry.

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 benefits them. For some people, it's not just about money and political power.

I am one of the most successful economists, according to what markets tell us, though most of my professional colleagues, who are much keener to accept market outcomes than I am, would dismiss me as a crank or - the worst of all abuses among economists - a 'sociologist.'

A lot of things that we cannot buy and sell in markets used to be totally legal objects of market exchange - human beings when we had slavery, child labour, human organs, and so on. So there is no economic theory that actually says that you shouldn't have slavery or child labour because all these are political, ethical judgments.