Ha-Joon Chang – Keynote Speaker

Ha-Joon is one of the world’s leading economists specialising in development economics. He lectures in the Economics of Development at Cambridge University and is a regular contributor to The Guardian since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.

He is author of several widely discussed books including “23 Things They Don’t Tell you About Capitalism” (2010). An easily accessible read, the book challenges some widely-held assumptions about market economics: There’s no such thing as a “free” market; Globalisation isn’t making the world richer; We don’t live in a digital world – the washing machine has changed more lives than the internet; Poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich ones; Higher-paid managers don’t produce better results.

His previous book “Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies and the Threat to the Developing World” (2007) was “A smart, lively and provocative book that offers us compelling new ways to look at globalisation” (Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2001).

He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the European Investment Bank as well as to Oxfam. He is also a fellow at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

By the end of 2016, his writings will have been translated and published in 40 languages and 43 countries. Worldwide, his books have sold nearly 2 million copies. He is the winner of the 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize and the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize. He was ranked no. 9 in the Prospect magazine’s World Thinkers 2014 poll.