Yuen Yuen Ang is the Alfred Chandler Chair Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University. She is a multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural scholar of adaptive political economy, specializing in China, with academic awards across the social sciences (political science, economics, sociology) and a record of public engagement and impact.
Ang is the inaugural recipient of Theda Skocpol Prize, awarded by the American Political Science Association for “impactful contributions to comparative politics,” in addition to the Peter Katzenstein Prize (politics), Douglass North Prize (economics, “for the best book in organizational and institutional economics”), Alice Amsden Prize (socio-economics, for “best book that breaks new ground in the study of economic behavior”), Viviana Zelizer Prize (economic sociology). She is the author of two award-winning books, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016) and China’s Gilded Age (2020), both recommended by The Economist. Specifically, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap is named by The Economist among “Five Books on Ending Poverty,” along with work by Sen, Easterly, Banerjee & Duflo, Acemoglu, Johnson & Robinson. Her research has received funding support from the US National Science Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York. Her recent essay “Adaptive Political Economy” appeared in World Politics. In 2024, she was invited to deliver the inaugural lecture at SOAS’ Development Leadership Dialogue on this essay.
Professor Ang is named one of the world’s “100 Most Influential Academics in Government” by Apolitical for research and writing that has “potential to steer the direction of government.” Foreign Affairs named her writing among the “Best of Books” and “Best of Print.” She has been profiled in media outlets worldwide, including CGTN, Die Zeit, Endgame, Ezra Klein Show (The New York Times), Freakonomics Radio. The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) produced a video lecture series on her scholarship, “The Economics of China,” available on YouTube. She is a Trustee of the Thomson-Reuters Founders Share Company, a guardian of the Trust Principles of independence, integrity, and freedom from bias in news reporting. Ang is from Singapore and received her BA and PhD from Colorado College and Stanford University.
Ang’s office is at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington DC. She is currently on leave.