Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies & the Threat to the Developing World

Author: Ha-Joon Chang
Publisher: Random House Business Books
Price: £18.99

All who extol the benefits of economic liberalism as a ‘level playing field’ and the only way ‘sick’ developing economies can progress, are misguided, and are ‘Bad Samaritans’, according to Cambridge-educated development economist Ha-Joon Chang.

Instead, Chang argues that developing countries should be allowed, by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, to set their own tariffs to protect their nascent industries. Chang attacks the Bad Samaritans’ argument that rich countries which now call for free trade, such as the UK and US, achieved their wealth by practising what they preached. Rather, he argues, it was through aggressive protectionism that their money was made.

Chang cites his native Korea as an example, where the economic success of the South (beginning in the 1960s and barring a crisis in 1997), was due, he argues, primarily to canny regulation on the part of the countries economic leaders.

So many Westerners label themselves as economic liberals, and believers in the virtues of the free-market economy, without in-depth knowledge of its implications for the developing world. Polemical in style, but light-hearted in tone, a read of Bad Samaritans should shock Westerners out of their complacency.

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