Countries are poor not because their people are lazy; their people are 'lazy' because they are poor.

Low inflation and government prudence may be harmful for economic development.

The foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.

All the alleged key causes of SOE [State-Owned Enterprise] inefficiency - the principal-agent problem, the free-rider problem and the soft budget constraint - are, while real, not unique to state-owned enterprises. Large private-sector firms with dispersed ownership also suffer from the principal-agent problem and the free-rider problem. So, in these two areas, forms of ownership do matter, but the critical divide is not between state and private ownership - it is between concentrated and dispersed ownerships.

Equality of opportunity is meaningless for those who do not have the capabilities to take advantage of it.

There is no such thing as a free market.

It takes time and experience to absorb new technologies, so technologically backward producers need a period of protection from international competition during this period of learning. Such protection is costly, because the country is giving up the chance to import better and cheaper products. However, it is a price that has to be paid if it wants to develop advanced industries.