The World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund come in for strong criticism from Chang for 'ladder-kicking' of this type which, he argues, is the fundamental obstacle to poverty alleviation in the developing world. In his book Kicking Away the Ladder (which won the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy's 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize), Chang argued that all major developed countries used interventionist economic policies in order to get rich and then tried to forbid other countries from doing the same. His work in this area is part of a broader approach to economics known as institutionalist political economy which places economic history and socio-political factors at the centre of the evolution of economic practices.

Chang's contribution to economics started while studying under Robert Rowthorn, a leading British Marxist economist, with whom he worked on the elaboration of the theory of industrial policy, which he described as a middle way between central planning and an unrestrained free market. In addition, Chang serves on the advisory board of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP).Īfter graduating from Seoul National University's Department of Economics, he studied at the University of Cambridge, earning an MPhil and a PhD for his thesis entitled The Political Economy of Industrial Policy – Reflections on the Role of State Intervention in 1991. He is also a fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, as well as to Oxfam and various United Nations agencies. In 2013, Prospect magazine ranked Chang as one of the top 20 World Thinkers. Chang is the author of several widely discussed policy books, most notably Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002). Ha-Joon Chang ( / tʃ æ ŋ/ Korean: 장하준 born 7 October 1963) is a South Korean institutional economist, specialising in development economics.

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