Photo: Discott / CC BY-SA 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
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.
Overview
Ha-Joon Chang (; Korean: 장하준; born 7 October 1963) is a South Korean economist and academic. Chang specialises in institutional economics and development, and lectured in economics at the University of Cambridge from 1990–2021 before becoming professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 2022.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- 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 62)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Libra / Rabbit
- Origin
- Seoul, South Korea
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- economist
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- University of Cambridge
Awards & achievements
- 2005 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought
- Gunnar Myrdal Prize
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
- Official sitehttps://hajoonchang.net/
- 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
Economist — see all → · More people from South Korea →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.