Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

Many markets work best with little or no outside interference. But others - especially those subject to big 'externalities' - need a helping hand.

I've made it very clear that the government should get out of the business of trying to affect the markets, of trying to pick winners and losers.

Subsidies should never be a permanent feature of any market. They should be introduced only to address market failure and they should be withdrawn gradually as those distortions in the market are addressed.

Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a "free market", we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. They had no quarrel with "big government" when it served their needs.

While admirers of capitalism, we also to a certain extent believe it has limitations that require government intervention in markets to make them work.

I have faith in the market when we get the rules right.

I've never been antiregulation. I've always believed that raw, unregulated capitalism doesn't work.

We want free markets, but the markets are not going to take care of themselves in all cases.

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum and for determining the “rules of the game”.

We want a free market, but we know that the paradox of a 'free' market is that sometimes you have to intervene. You have to make sure it's not the law of the jungle but the laws of democracy that works.

There is certainly a role for regulation, but regulation should always take into account the impact that it has on markets, a balance that must be constantly weighed.

Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished.

No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.

All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure is always offered to take more of the poison that caused the disaster. Depressions are not the result of a free economy.

I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.

We no longer have a free market in the United States, we have a government controlled free market.

I think we need to significantly reduce the regulatory burden on the private sector. The Obama administration is doing the opposite. They're loading on more and more regulation on the private respect to how the economy functions.

Markets are, in the end, man-made devices for utilitarian purposes, not a force of nature that we should not try to resist. If they end up serving the interests of only a tiny minority, as is increasingly the case, we have the right - and indeed the duty - to regulate them in the interest of greater social good.

Markets that don't work we're going to step away from.

When the government gets involved in pricing, I don't think it's the right way to look at a business.

Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

You know, I've got experiences going back to the wage price controls in the Nixon administration where, in effect, we had what I think was a terrible mistake, in that case a Republican administration, where moved in and tried to control the wages, prices and profits of every enterprise in America. It was a huge mistake.

I always found the appeal to the market gods a bit odd. Why would the market fix mistakes instead of aggravating them?

You don't have to kill the economy to regulate it.

If you think that government regulators are going to outwit the market, you've got a Jurassic Park fantasy.