Steven N. S. Cheung - Contribution To Economics and China's Economic Development

Contribution To Economics and China's Economic Development

Chueng's contribution to economics and China's economic development can be roughly grouped in the following areas,

  1. New Institutional Economics
    1. how different kinds of contractual arrangement affect transaction costs, which are often ignored by neoclassical economists
    2. realizing the importance of transaction costs (as Cheung often mentions in his writings, if there is no transaction costs (the original starting point assumption by Coase), there is no difference in using different institutional arrangements (e.g. market or government)).
    3. the nature of the firm (a government, to a certain extent, is a firm and can be more efficient than the market in some areas),
  2. Methodology
    1. emphasis on economic explanation (according to Cheung, economic explanation is the ONLY objective of the study of economics);
    2. the analysis of relevant and observable real world constraints: Adam Smith's tradition,
    3. downward sloping demand curve: Neoclassical tradition,
    4. theories must be potentially refutable but not yet refuted (Cheung considers many mainstream concepts not observable, leading to the non-refutable nature of many theories (such as utilities, welfare))
    5. focus on capturing the underlying and relevant constraints to explain economic phenomena that might seem odd and strange on the surface.
  3. China's economic development
    1. Considerable influence among the Chinese speaking population (most of his work after 1982 are written in Chinese);
    2. Prediction of China's institutional reform (which, in general, has been quite accurate)
    3. Analysis of the deficiencies in the Chinese state owned enterprises


Read more about this topic:  Steven N. S. Cheung

Famous quotes containing the words contribution to, contribution, economics, china, economic and/or development:

    “Parents are used to being made to feel guilty about...their contribution to the population problem, the school tax burden, and declining test scores. They expect to be blamed by teachers and psychologists, if not by police. And they will be blamed by the children themselves. It is hardy a wonder, then, that they withdraw into what used to be called “permissiveness” but is really neglect.”
    —C. John Sommerville (20th century)

    “Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them—their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.”
    —F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    “I am not prepared to accept the economics of a housewife.”
    —Jacques Chirac (b. 1932)

    “Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter, or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.”
    —Henry Miller (1891–1980)

    “Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.”
    —Simone Weil (1909–1943)