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Rating: 
Summary: An iconoclastic and sophiscated work
Review: According to Michael Lind's book review in Prospect (Jan 2002), this book is "the most important book about the world economy to be published in years." And the author received the 2003 Myrdal Award for this book, which is awarded annually to a great academic achievement in the field of development/institutional economics following the late Swedish economist's name Gunar Myrdal who was a Nobel Prize laureate. Prof. Ha-Joon Chang of Cambridge argues in this book that developed countries used some measures for promoting their economy in their earlier days of development, which they are now blaming for making the economies of developing country worse and the world economic order unfree. The author reverses this logic. According to his arguments, policy-suggestions from such arguments of developed countries are in fact making the economy in developing countries lag behind and its development impossible, and such a rule of game in the world economy now can be rather unfair to them because developing countries even are often punished due to their using of the very same methods which developed ones used in the past. As a critique of neo-liberal market fundamentalism, this book is very iconoclastic because it gives readers a sophisticated understanding of the real history of industrial development as well as pleasure of reading an academically original and creative work. This book is above all analytical in terms of using the method of historical comparisons. Some comparisons may be too bold. But its creativity and integrity in organizing the research overcome the limits of bold comparison.
Rating: 
Summary: Nearly pointless...
Review: I admire professor Chang's academic work, but this attempt at pedagogy isn't quite so successful. Chang's book relies on a blatant
Post hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy. The fact that most countries had interventionist states during their periods of industrialization will not convince anyone of a causal relationship between the two.
Of ocurse, state intervention was indeed the cause of industrialization, but Chang will not convince any ideologues of the free market. When this book is put head to head against a "Human Action" or "Man,Economy and State", there is no question what book will come out ahead.
The only neo liberals that this book will convince are those who have been exposed to Ayn Rand's Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc conjecture on the market and Industrial revolution. But even if a Randian felt the state was good at achieving utilitarian ends, would this convert them? I think not.
The only value in this book comes from Chang's discussion of Institutions. Is it realistic for us to force other nations to adopt certain institutions when it took so long for us to do so?
That being said, a much better book on the Developmental state would be Merideth Woo Cummings ed. "The Developmental State". It contains a good paper by Chang himself.
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