Ha-Joon Chang - 'Framing the Austerity Debate'

Date: Wednesday, 03 December 2014
Time:18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Dr Ha-Joon Chang
Talk Title: 'Framing the Austerity Debate'
Location: McGrath Centre, St Catharine's College, Cambridge

Here is a film of the presentation that took place on 3 December 2014

Speaker:
Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at the University of Cambridge. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he has published 15 authored books (four co-authored) and 10 edited books. His main books include 'The Political Economy of Industrial Policy', 'Kicking Away the Ladder', 'Bad Samaritans', '23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism', and 'Economics: The User’s Guide'. By the end of 2014, his writings will have been translated and published in 36 languages and 39 countries. Worldwide, his books have sold around 1.5 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.

Talk Overview:
In this seminar, Ha-Joon Chang will discuss how the coalition government has successfully exploited some mistaken popular conceptions about economic issues like debt, deficit, welfare, taxation, regulation, etc. to create a narrative on the inevitability and the virtue of its austerity drive. He will further argue that the austerity narrative is more importantly hiding a more radical agenda of restructuring the British economy and society, completing the unfinished Thatcherite revolution.