Ha-Joon Chang

you know, what is going on in the economy.

I think in a sense, an economist, proper economist would laugh at this, but actually some credible economists, Ha-Joon Chang is one of them, believe now that, you know, emotion is one of the most underestimated, you know, decision-making inputs into how economies work and so on.

That was a long and rambling answer, but it's a really important question.

And the answer, simple answer would have been yes.

How do you look at the recent turn of institutions like World Bank and IMF towards this idea that industrial policy is now important, right? Because both of the institutions have been known to have advocated for a more laissez-faire policy with the conditionalities that you've mentioned, not in a climate context, but conditionality nonetheless that a lot of developing countries have faced, right? How do you look at the turn with all of the recent reports on prioritizing industrial policy and sovereignty?

The best literature out there is available from scholars like Ha-Joon Chang and his entire community.

The acknowledgement of the resurgence of industrial policy from the World Bank and IMF is seen by so many of these development economists as a very interesting, somewhat hypocritical turn, because these are the same countries that denied in past decades that economies like South Korea had actually deployed, you know, the state-led developmentalism and industrial policy deployed by countries like South Korea led to a lot of their industrial success.

You had a lot of these institutions like the World Bank and the IMF denying that state-led efforts actually played a role in that success.

I love this part.

There is this amazing comparison in the text from an economist named Ha-Joon Chang written back in 2010.

Oh, yes.

The washing machine.