Yew-Kwang Ng

Yew-Kwang Ng or simply Kwang (Chinese: 黃有光; English pronunciation /ˈkwæŋ/;^[1] born 7 August 1942) is a Malaysian-Australian economist, who is currently Emeritus Professor of Economics at Monash University, and an Honorary Professor at the School of Economics, Peking University. In 2007, he was elected as Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia. He was elected in 1981 to be a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia; and became a Jubilee Fellow since 2021.

He has published in a variety of academic disciplines and is best known for his work in welfare economics.

Yew-Kwang Ng was born during the Second World War, in Japanese-occupied Malaya. While in high school, he was drawn to studying economics because of his ambition to "establish communism in an independent Malaysia".^[2]

His views later evolved, influenced by his study of economics and by observing the Cultural Revolution in China and developments in the Soviet Union.^[3]

Ng graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from Nanyang University in 1966 and later a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney in 1971.^[4] During his studies at Nanyang University, and even earlier during his high school years amid periods of unrest, Ng came close to being arrested or expelled several times.^[5][3]

During the 1980s, working as a columnist, Ng wrote in support of Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up.^[3] Ng has been a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia since 1981. He held a chair as professor of economics at Monash University between 1985 and 2012 and is now an emeritus professor.^[4]

Between 2013 and 2019, Ng held the Winsemius chair at the Department of Economics at Nanyang Technological University.^[4] In 2018, Ng delivered the inaugural Atkinson Memorial lecture at the University of Oxford, dedicated to the memory of Sir Tony Atkinson.^[6] From July 2019 to December 2020, Ng held the position of Special Chair Professor at the School of Economics at Fudan University, Shanghai.^[7] He is also a columnist for the Chinese business news NetEase Finance online portal.^[8]

Ng has written or co-authored more than 30 books and published more than two hundred refereed papers in economics and papers on biology, mathematics, philosophy, cosmology, psychology, and sociology.^[9][10] He proposed welfare biology as an academic discipline,^[11] stating that this has been his more underestimated contribution.^[12] He published his first academic paper in the Journal of Political Economy, one of the top five economics journals, while he was still an undergraduate student.^[13][14]

Ng is renowned for his work in welfare economics and a majority of his academic papers are in this area.^[13] He wrote his first book on the topic in 1979, Welfare Economics: Introduction and Development of Basic Concepts.^[15] Within welfare economics, he is particularly known for his work on the theory of the third best, social choice theory and happiness economics.^[13] In many publications, he defends a view of utility as being both cardinally measurable and interpersonally comparable.^[16]

Ng coined the term "mesoeconomics" and helped establish the field as a simplified, tractable general-equilibrium analysis with both micro and macro elements.^[17] As a method, it is used to study the implications of imperfect competition on the macroeconomy. It has been argued that mesoeconomics "typically yields conclusions that are consistently more closely aligned with empirical evidence than any of the competing macroeconomic models."^[13] It provides many comparative-static results, including the Keynesian (with effects on real output/incomes but not on the price level) and the Monetarist (with effects on the price level but not on real output/incomes) results on the effects of a change of nominal aggregate demand as special cases.^[17]

Ng contributed to the development of the new field of inframarginal economics, which "provides an analytical framework [...] to reconcile the focus of neoclassical economics on distribution with the preoccupations of classical economists [...] regarding the division of labour."^[13] He collaborated with Xiaokai Yang on this topic and in 1993 they published the joint book Specialization and Economic Organization: A New Classical Microeconomic Framework, which was said to have "credibly challenged Neoclassical Economics".^[13][18]

In moral philosophy, Ng advocates for the consequentialist position of hedonistic utilitarianism. He has defended this view in various academic papers, some of which were jointly written with the utilitarian moral philosopher Peter Singer.^[19][20] He also argues for this position in his 2000 book Efficiency, Equality, and Public Policy.^[21]

Thanks to his early work on animal welfare, global catastrophic risks and the measurement of wellbeing, he is credited with originating many ideas that would later be incorporated into the philosophy of effective altruism.^[3] In a 2020 paper, Ng analyses the implications of the economic theory of the second best for effective altruism, arguing that we live in a "third best" world where informational and administrative constraints prevent us from realising the second best outcomes.^[22]

In 2024, economist Yew-Kwang Ng published an article titled "Welfare economics: Reducing animal suffering at negligible costs" in Open Access Government.^[23]

In this article, Ng argues that there is an ethical reason to reduce animal suffering, particularly among farmed animals, when this can be done at little or no cost to humans. He notes that farmed animals are under human control and therefore their welfare should receive particular attention. Ng also proposes policy measures aimed at reducing animal suffering, and situates these arguments within his wider account of welfare biology.^[24]

In 2024, Ng co-authored a paper titled "How antidumping measures affect US imports from China: A mesoeconomic perspective of the excess price changes," published in Pacific Economic Review. The study employs a mesoeconomic model to analyze the impact of U.S. antidumping measures on import volumes and prices from China.^[25]

Professor Ng's 2024 book, Do We Survive Our Biological Death?: A Rational Examination, published by Eliva Books, explores the concept of postmortem survival. Drawing from empirical evidence and conceptual analysis, Ng provides a rational perspective on the possibility of life after death.^[26]

Ng has continued to develop the interdisciplinary field of welfare biology, which he first proposed in 1995.^[27] Welfare biology examines the well-being of sentient beings in relation to their environments, with particular attention to the balance between enjoyment and suffering.^[28] Recent work has discussed the role of welfare biology in informing responses to wild animal suffering and in assessing the welfare of nonhuman animals, especially those living outside direct human control.^[27]

Ng published Markets and Morals: Justifying Kidney Sales and Legalizing Prostitution, (Cambridge University Press, 2019) that revisits the concept of market boundaries.^[29] Grounded in welfare economics, the book argues for expanding the scope of markets to traditionally restricted domains, such as kidney sales and sex work.^[30] Ng adopts a welfarist utilitarian ethics perspective, asserting that policies should be evaluated based on their capacity to maximize societal well-being, rather than conforming to traditional taboos. ^[31]

Ng's 2022 open-access book, Happiness: Concept, Measurement, and Promotion, published by Springer, examines some conceptual mistakes about happiness, argues that happiness is the only thing of ultimate intrinsic value, discusses the East-Asian happiness gap (which Ng proposed in 2002) and the environmentally responsible happiness nation index (which Ng proposed in 2008 as a more appropriate national success indicator than the GDP).^[32] It also discusses factors affecting happiness and ways to promote happiness and the relevant implications for public policy, including a case for higher public spending and the concern for animal welfare.^[33]

Ng has received a number of awards in recognition of his work. In 2007, he was made a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia, the highest award that the Society bestows.^[34] In the tribute associated with the award, he was described as "one of Australia's most important and best internationally known economists."^[13] According to Economics Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, Ng is "one of the leading economic theorists of his generation" and Nobel Laureate James Buchanan credited him to have "made major contributions in theoretical Welfare Economics."^[13]

After Ng's retirement from Monash University, he was recognised as an "honorary and adjunct appointment" by the Department of Economics.^[35] Given Ng's interest in global priorities research, he was on the advisory board of the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford over 2018-2023.^[36]

Ng has stated that "trying to avoid excessive inequality [is] a very important issue, and likely the third most important public issue after environmental protections and peacekeeping".^[37] He is also a proponent of generous immigration policies, stating that "immigrants bring in factors complementary to the local ones and make the economy more vibrant".^[38][39]

In 2020, Ng wrote a column which suggested that allowing polyandry could be a way for China to reduce problems arising from the male-skewed gender ratio in the country. Ng also stated his intention to write a follow-up column discussing the pros and cons of legalizing prostitution.^[40] The column went viral and attracted heavy criticism online; many critics said that Ng's arguments were misogynistic and offensive, while others objected to polyandry as contrary to traditional marriage.^[41][42]

In 2015, Ng offered to match all donations to up to $25,000 to the charity organization Animal Ethics, a nonprofit organization aiming to promote animal ethics and to provide information and resources for animal advocates.^[43]

At the Nanyang Technological University Chinese Heritage Centre's Mid-Autumn Festival charity auction in 2016, Ng and his wife donated S$100,000, which went towards the purchase of a painting by Master Yang Bailiang, a Chinese artist, which Ng donated to the centre and is now on permanent display.^[44] In 2025, he contributed more than ten million Chinese dollars (about 1.5 million US dollars) to the School of Economics, Peking University to help establish a scholarship.^[1] He also pledged two million British pounds to the Society for Psychical Research, with more than a quarter already donated.^[2]

• 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.
• 1990. "Welfarism and Utilitarianism: A Rehabilitation": Utilitas 2 (2): pp. 171–193. Abstract.
• 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.
• 1999. "Utility, informed preference, or happiness: Following Harsanyi's argument to its logical conclusion", Social Choice and Welfare, 16, pp. 197–216. Abstract.
• 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.
• 2011. "Happiness Is Absolute, Universal, Ultimate, Unidimensional, Cardinally Measurable and Interpersonally Comparable: A Basis for the Environmentally Responsible Happy Nation Index," Monash Economics Working Papers 16–11. Abstract.
• 2011. "Consumption tradeoff vs. catastrophes avoidance: implications of some recent results in happiness studies on the economics of climate change," Climatic Change, 105: 109. Abstract.
• 2016. "How welfare biology and common sense may help to reduce animal suffering," Animal Sentience, 7. Abstract.
• 2016. "The Importance of Global Extinction in Climate Change Policy," Global Policy, 7(3), pp. 315–322. Abstract.
• 2017. "Towards a Theory of Third‐Best," Pacific Economic Review, 22(2), pp. 155–166. Abstract.
• 2020. "Effective altruism despite the second-best challenge: Should indirect effects Be taken into account for policies for a better future?," Futures, 121. Abstract.

• 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)
• 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. Common Mistakes in Economics by the Public, Students, Economists & Nobel Laureates (New York: Nova Science Publishers)
• 2019. Markets and Morals: Justifying Kidney Sales and Legalizing Prostitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
• 2020. Evolved-God Creationism (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing)
• 2022. Happiness—Concept, Measurement and Promotion (New York: Springer)
• 2024. Do We Survive Our Biological Death?: A Rational Examination (Chișinău: Eliva Press)

• Yew-Kwang Ng's Home Page Archived 5 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
• Yew Kwang Ng's NetEase column (in Chinese)
• Yew-Kwang Ng publications indexed by Google Scholar
• EconPapers of Yew-Kwang Ng