ABSTRACT
Ha-Joon Chang is a South Korean economist specializing in international development: the process by which a nation advances its prosperity, infrastructure, and living standards; he is a renowned critic of neoliberalism (the belief that economic growth is best secured by limiting government economic intervention). Chang, the author of Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, is a development economist at Cambridge University in England. In Kicking Away the Ladder, Chang argues that we should question what we have been taught about the history of economic development—specifically, what made today's developed nations economic successes. One of Kicking Away the Ladder's most important contributions is its unique methodology—the method Chang employed to reach his conclusions. While the book did not create any new schools of theory, and was not based on original research, it was the first to gather historical studies of rich countries in such depth and to build a broader argument against neoliberalism as an instrument of development.
