Ha-Joon Chang

Ha-Joon Chang is, to me, the rare economist who writes like he genuinely wants ordinary people to understand power. Seoul-born and a Cambridge fixture for three decades before moving to SOAS, he turned institutional and development economics into something readable, even combative, puncturing free-market orthodoxy with real-world evidence. The Leontief and Gunnar Myrdal prizes confirm his standing, but what I value is his refusal to hide behind jargon. He insists economics is about how people actually live, and that conviction makes his work feel less like a lecture and more like an honest argument worth having.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Ha-Joon Chang

Name (Japanese)

ハ・ヨンジュン・チャン

Reading

は・よんじゅん・ちゃん

Born

October 7, 1963 (age 63)

Origin

Seoul, South Korea

Occupation

economist

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Libra / Rabbit

University

University of Cambridge

Awards & achievements

• 2005 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought
• Gunnar Myrdal Prize

• Official sitehttps://hajoonchang.net/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon%20Chang
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%8F%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A5%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q32729

Tags

• economist

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.