Industrial Policy | Economics for People with Ha-Joon Chang

Free-market economists like to pretend that economic planning has no role in a successful economy. But many economists now recognize the important role of industrial policy, as Ha-Joon Chang explains in this thirteenth lecture in INET’s “Economics For People” series.
About “Economics for People”:
“It is extremely important for our democracy to function that ordinary citizens understand the key issues and basic theories of economics.” - Ha-Joon Chang
Economics has long been the domain of the ivory tower, where specialized language and opaque theorems make it inaccessible to most people. That’s a problem.
In the new series “Economics For People” from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), University of Cambridge economist and bestselling author Ha-Joon Chang explains key concepts in economics, empowering anyone to hold their government, society, and economy accountable.

[@ashish1barua]

He completely exposed the neoclassical economists.

[@nelsonramonortega7632]

Prof. Chang is a miracle. So easy to understand, so insightful. I had the blessing of studying in Korea and could see that his influence in Korean academia is significant.

[@triniduane]

He is indeed.

[@arturodiazleon5705]

It is a shame to Mexico when the neoliberal public policy, mainly industrial policy were not explicitly implemented by the government for wrong ideological reasons and mistakes of understanding the principal role of these in promoting fast economic development the last 30 years ago. Thanks to Ph Mr. Chang to help to change our point of view and start to recover the role of the state policies in Mexico as President Lopez Obrador is doing very well the last two years when he won the federal political election in 2018.

[@lolongubeni1748]

Prof Chang, thank you for this well researched and fact based lecture. Love that he mentioned our struggling economy in south Africa🤣

[@nqobazithamlambo9624]

Hahahhah

[@hyeonuchun7213]

What a quality lecture. Thank you so much, Prof, Chang!

[@manuelgonzales2570]

Excellent lecture. Thank you!

[@aniketsachan9150]

Designing of economic policy is a result of political economy. Policy makers mostly know what is right, but they don't know how to win elections after implementing it. How can one make policies more palatable? This question is even more important with rise of populism and backlash against globalisation.

[@IshtarNike]

Notably, most of the countries that implemented these policies in recent times have been very authoritarian. South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore were all highly authoritarian states during their initial explosive industrialization. I don't know if that's a coincidence or what but it helps keep industry on side to a degree without being so authoritarian that the business magnates flee the country. They were still afforded very lucrative opportunities while still being kept on a relatively short leash in global terms. It's a delicate balancing act. No western neoliberal state would tolerate the capital controls and tariffs necessary for that kind of development today.

[@stavroskarageorgis4804]

@@IshtarNike *Not* a coincidence. I know it sounds oxymoronic but still: elected "authoritarian" (illiberal wrt to the rights of *propertied* entities) governments, genuine "democratic centralism", illiberal majoritarianism , are, instrumentally and empirically (functionally) "better" for sustained and widespread economic growth and development than propertytarian liberal democracies or autocratic regimes. The latter (propertytarian autocratic regimes) are the worst of all, on every level.

[@josiasnkwana9282]

Is more like how do u convince the public that the policies will do the job

[@geopolitics94]

Love from Tanzania 🇹🇿

[@joynwamah4901]

Very educative and insightful.

[@petermanuel5043]

Thanks for this.

[@arturodiazleon5705]

Las palabras finales del Dr. Ha-Joo Chang son dignas de repetirse: mucho del avance experimentado por las economías más exitosas no fueron resultado de los economistas (sean del Fondo Monetario, hasta de la academia pura internacional), cuyo marco teórico general es limitado (como se desprende de la exposición). Por lo tanto, se tiene que tener humildad (para los economistas en general) para hacer recomendaciones al respecto del desarrollo de las economías. Refiere a la importancia del pragmatismo y a las particularidades de cada economía en la toma de decisiones que fueron hechas en la marcha (ensayo y error) como parte de la creación de conocimiento y nuevas realidades en la evolución del desarrollo. Magistral, felicidades al Dr. Ha-Joo Chang.

[@johnnix2568]

remarkable lecture!

[@westonedwards5385]

Would you mind releasing a transcript with the video as many of us are using your material in college classes and would benefit from being able to scan through the lectures?

[@swpolitical]

Click on the "three dots" and click on "Show transcripts"

[@ameliaswan7580]

great lecture. A very calm and radical thinker. ( I found how it was filmed - with slow pans, vignette effect and close ups on the audience - was distracting. I would have preferred Chang's lecture be filmed with less "creative" imput from the camera people).

[@ernestmwape]

Camera should be focussed on slides throughout, with few insertions of audience - audience are not native English speakers, but can follow by reading from screen

[@tiempoeconomico]

Great class! #TiempoEconómico

[@josedavidgarcesceballos7]

Cannot help to remember Currie and Hirshman with all of this.

[@kyo-chan8695]

Good lecture

[@samuelskillern7365]

This is quite an insightful lecture. I've discovered industrial policy not that long ago and I've found it quite interesting. This lecture definitely helped me grasp the concept and is much more intuitive than reading articles meant for practicing economists. Now, would industrial policy be considered macroeconomic like monetary or fiscal policy, or would it be considered it's own kind of policy?

[@aardjazz]

the last sentence was excellent :)

[@zaidalialmajdi4792]

اتمنى أن يترجم عدد أكبر من محاضراتكم .

[@trangdong8300]

Great lecture! Can I get his slides :D

[@trangdong8300]

Did I miss it, or did Prof. Chang forget the second solution of Japan and Korea to deal with excessive competition? (24:40)

[@anthonyagbojo1408]

👏👏👏👏

[@stewartjones2173]

Socialism with a large 'S' is how Society distributed it's llargesse.

[@PoliticalEconomy101]

Kewl

[@rankinnwc]

please do a lecture on tax policy, specifically how tax laws burden the individual household and eliminate those same burdens for the FIRE sectors of the economy.

[@pappapaps]

What is the melody in the intro?

[@vajliakduke6231]

45:29 is that true? Economists in Japan be influenced by Marx?

[@johnnywoodson4231]

Marxist philosophy had a relatively major impact on Japanese academia as a whole because during the Cold War academia is one of the only place that Marxism can exert its influence in countries like Japan.

[@IshtarNike]

This isn't surprising at all really. Being influenced by Marx doesn't make one a Marxist or even necessarily likely to adhere to follow the Soviet model. Marx was a great thinker and we need to move away from this knee jerk belief that he was somehow catastrophically wrong about economics in some way. He didn't outline any detailed economic or development policies so the failure of the Soviet communist experiments lies primarily with other people. He's no more responsible for that than Adam Smith is for US capitalism today.

[@leehayes4019]

An easy argument could be made that economics in general have been influenced by Marx. Capital accumulation and business cycles are widely accepted ideas.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Holographic Principle => all Spinfoam Spacetime is qualitatively emitter-receiver, inflation-condensation, fight or flight, attack or defend by AM-FM Communication in the "Event Horizon" here-now of QM-TIME existence, ..in which we are coherence-cohesion embedded Modulation Mechanism proportioning-positioning, time-timing objectives in Perspective. A general background Education from First Principle is technically.., condensed matter nodal differentiates of axial-tangential orthogonality integration. Geometrical Drawing and Perspective Projection Techniques in terms of Logarithmic Time coordination provide a holistic approach to reasoning about Reciproction-recirculation Sciencing of probabilistic Accountability. Actual Intelligence is "wordless" pure-math relative-timing ratio-rates, Fields in which Economics is a sub event in the Ecology. Biased idealogical objectives that sacrifice one or the other sides of the natural Ledger of metastable bio-logical re-evolution circularity quantization, is a recipe for failure. So Military Defence Accountability vs Health and Welfare, is the central Q&A to the Field of Economics. Ie war economies are equivalent to a "sugar hit" stimulus for the body. Short and sweet, bad for your health.

[@ernestmwape]

That was something😏

[@dallasweaver4061]

Industrial policy can work for second-rate economies where you can buy talent and technology from outside the country. For the leading edge, it consistently fails. The US and EU created mRNA vaccines and China tried to buy or steal the IP. They had all the basic research and copies of patents but now they are buying from the West. We are not talking about a few % tariffs, but the ability to make the product when they know what it is and how it is made. Bureaucrats and spies don't know how to actually do it. Remember, these companies went from the RNA of the new virus to testing in months and China has had 3 years just to copy and fail. Of course our bureaucratic equivalent the FDA and CDC couldn't even test for the virus and dropped the ball all over the place. You can never lead the world with a planned economy. Chang is right if your objectives are always being second-rate. Innovation is hard and old bureaucracies are risk-averse and only marginally competent and don't have a very good mechanism for failure for ideas that don't work out (the art of VC is the quick kill).

[@stewartjones2173]

All this talk about providing infrastructure and the word Socialism is not even mentioned. It's only a word wrongly used as a pejorative.

[@barrionomia]

Be more humble about what you can tell other people to do.