Yew-Kwang Ng

Yew-Kwang Ng (Simplified Chinese: 黄有光; born 1942) is an economist at Nanyang Technological University. He graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from Nanyang University in 1966 and later a Ph.D. from Sydney University in 1971.

He holds the Winsemius chair at the Division of Economics, NTU. He retired from a personal chair at Monash University and is now an emeritus professor with them. He has been a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia since 1980. He is renowned for his work in welfare economics. He helped establish mesoeconomics as a simplified, tractable general-equilibrium analysis with both micro and macro elements. He proposed welfare biology as a subject. He collaborated with Xiaokai Yang on an inframarginal analysis of division of labour. He has published more than two hundred refereed papers in economics and papers on biology, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. He has published a Kungfu novel in Chinese serialized in Nanyang Business Daily (Malaysia) and as a book The Unparalleled Mystery (1994).

Ng has received a number of awards in recognition of his work. He was recently made a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia, the highest award that the Society bestows. In moral philosophy, he is a firm believer in utilitarianism and has provided strong arguments supporting it, including in his Efficiency, Equality, and Public Policy.

Select bibliography

Articles

• 1982. "A Micro-Macroeconomic Analysis Based on a Representative Firm," Economica, N.S., 49(194), p p. 121-139.
• 1984. "Quasi-Pareto Social Improvements," American Economic Review, 74(5), p p. 1033-1050.
• 1992. "Business Confidence and Depression Prevention: A Mesoeconomic Perspective," American Economic Review, 82(2), p p. 365-371.
• 1995. "Towards Welfare Biology: Evolutionary Economics of Animal Consciousness and Suffering," Biology and Philosophy, 10(3), pp. 255–285. Abstract.
• 1997. "A Case for Happiness, Cardinalism, and Interpersonal Comparability," Economic Journal, 107(445), p p. 1848-1858.
• 2001. "Welfare-reducing Growth Despite Individual and Government Optimization," Social Choice and Welfare, 18(3), pp. 497–506 with Siang Ng Abstract.
• 2001. "Is Public Spending Good for You?," World Economics, 2(2), pp. 1–17, with Harold Bierman. Abstract.
• 2003. "From Preference to Happiness: Towards a More Complete Welfare Economics, Social Choice and Welfare, 20(2), pp. 307-350. Abstract.
• 2006. "Population Dynamics and Animal Welfare: Issues Raised by the Culling of Kangaroos in Puckapunyal," Social Choice and Welfare, 27(2), pp. 407–422, with Matthew Clarke.
• 2007. "Eternal Coase and External Costs: A Case for Bilateral Taxation and Amenity Rights, European Journal of Political Economy, 23(3), pp. 641–659. Abstract.

Books

• 1979 and 1983. Welfare Economics (London: Macmillan),
• 1986. Mesoeconomics: A Micro-Macro Analysis (London: Wheatsheaf)
• 1990. Social Welfare and Economic Policy (London: Wheatsheaf)
• 1993. Specialization and Economic Organization (Amsterdam: North-Holland, with X. Yang)
• 1994. The Unparalleled Mystery (Beijing: Writers Press). ISBN 7-5063-0695-6
• 1998. Increasing Returns and Economic Analysis, ed. with Kenneth Arrow and X. Yang (London: Macmillan). Description & ch. previews.
• 1999. Economics and Happiness (Collected papers in Chinese) (Taipei: Maw Chang)
• 2000. Efficiency, Equality, and Public Policy: With a Case for Higher Public Spending (London: Macmillan)
• 2011. Mistakes in Economics by the Public, Students, Economists and Nobel Laureates (New York: Nova Science Publishers)

External links

• Yew-Kwang Ng's Home Page
• EconPapers of Yew-Kwang Ng