Sho-Chieh Tsiang

Sho-Chieh Tsiang (August 25, 1918 – October 21, 1993) was a Chinese-American economist.

He studied at Keio University and London School of Economics (B.Sc. Economics 1941, Ph.D. Economics 1945) under Friedrich Hayek and received the Hutchinson Silver Medal 1944–45.

He served as Professor of Economics at National Peking University, 1946–48, staff economist at the International Monetary Fund, member of Academia Sinica, and Professor of Economics at University of Rochester and Cornell University.

He also resided in Taiwan in 1948 and in the 1980s.

He was born in China but resided primarily in the United States from 1949 until his death.

Their advice was implemented, beginning with foreign exchange reform in beginning in 1958.

Tsiang advocated the unification of multiple exchange rates and the devaluation of the New Taiwan dollar from artificially overvalued levels.

Understanding that Taiwan at that time had cheap labor relative to the world market, he advocated for a liberalization of interest rate controls to promote savings and produce funds for investment for small enterprises, and proposed low tariffs to encourage exports.

In this way, Taiwan could exploit its comparative advantage in labor-intensive goods on the world market.

This was counter to prevailing policy recommendations by economists of the day, for whom "import substitution" was a common policy prescription where subsidization of domestic heavy industry was seen as a fast track to modernization.

He also wrote for the public audience in Taiwan, engaging in lively public debates while director of the Taiwan Institute for Economic Research and later, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research.

He was founding director of the Chung-Hwa Institute for Economic Research, serving from 1981 until his resignation in 1993 due to illness.

Tsiang's academic contributions include work on the demand for money, monetary theoretic foundations of the monetary approach to the balance of payments, an early statement of the relation between spot and forward exchange rates, and the role of money in trade balance stability.

However, together with his lifelong friend and colleague Ta-Chung Liu, also a professor at Cornell University, gave practical advice to the Republic of China on economic policy.

Together they advocated against central planning and for creating an environment that encouraged private enterprises to compete on world markets.

They were able to convince members of the government, such as Economic Minister, Kwoh-Ting Li of the soundness of their views.

He was the father-in-law of Lars Peter Hansen (2013 Nobel Prize in Economics laureate).