Steven Cheung | |
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Born |
British Hong Kong |
December 1, 1935
Nationality | United States |
Institution |
University of Chicago University of Washington University of Hong Kong |
Field | Transaction cost, property rights, China's economic development |
School or tradition |
New institutional economics |
Alma mater |
Wa Ying College Queen's College, Hong Kong University of California, Los Angeles |
Influences | Adam Smith, Armen Alchian, Ronald Coase, Jack Hirshleifer, Milton Friedman, Aaron Director |
Contributions | 1969 The Theory of Share Tenancy 1982 Will China Go Capitalist? |
Steven N. S. Cheung | |||||||
Traditional Chinese | 張五常 | ||||||
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Simplified Chinese | 张五常 | ||||||
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Transcriptions | |
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Standard Mandarin | |
Hanyu Pinyin | Zhāng Wǔcháng |
Steven Ng-Sheong Cheung (born December 1, 1935) is a Hong-Kong-born American economist who specializes in the fields of transaction costs and property rights, following the approach of new institutional economics. He achieved his public fame with an economic analysis on China open-door policy after the 1980s. In his studies of economics, he focuses on economic explanation that is based on real world observation (an observation first approach). He is also the first to introduce concepts from the Chicago School of Economics, especially price theory, into China.
He obtained his PhD in economics from UCLA, where his teachers were the American economists Armen Alchian and Jack Hirshleifer. He taught in the Department of Economics at the University of Washington from 1969 to 1982, and then at the University of Hong Kong from 1982 to 2000. During this period, Cheung reformed the syllabus of Hong Kong's A-level Economics examination, adding the concepts of the postulate of constrained maximization, methodology, transaction cost and property right, most of which originate from the theories of the Chicago school.
A Hakka of Huiyang, Guangdong ancestry born in Hong Kong in 1935, Cheung fled to China in 1941 due to the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. From 1959 to 1967, he studied Economics at UCLA and prepared a PhD dissertation. From 1967 to 1969, he did postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago, analysing share tenancy and variable rural land resource allocation, and was hired as an assistant professor after impressing Milton Friedman in a debate. In 1969, he moved to the University of Washington where he taught until 1982. Under the advice of several friends, including Ronald Coase, he returned to Hong Kong as a professor in University of Hong Kong to support the economic reforms of China.