Three years ago In the discussion at "Democracy Now" an economist at the University of Cambridge Ha-Joon Chang declared that the recipes and recommendations of IMF, World Bank and Western governments for the developing countries like cutting the spending, running budget surpluses, rising high interest rates and tightening the belt are not only not solving difficulties in the developing world, but worsening the situation.
He made a statement that the developed countries, which used protectionism, are now prohibiting this measure for the developing countries, thus "kicking away the ladder" for its development, in the book "Kicking away the ladder" and in his following books.
For his book "Kicking away the ladder" Ha-Joon Chang has been awarded Vasily Leontiev's Prize, he is also the author of series of books on industrialization, the free market myth and history of capitalism. Despite the rightful arguments, raised by Ha-Joon Chang and other economists during many years, that the neoliberal recipes do not work, they are still being prescribed as the right way to go out of the crisis and for a country to develop.
Ha-Joon Chang is a leading heterodox economists and institutional economists specialising in development economics
Currently a Reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge, Chang is the author of several widely-discussed policy books, most notably Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002). Chang's latest book is "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism". Amongst many issues, he controversially claims that "the washing machine has changed society more than the Internet".
