“Economics and science fiction have many relationships that are rarely noticed. A lot of economics is science fiction, in that economists believe in the fiction that they are practicing a ‘science’, and that progress in this ‘science’ can potentially solve all economic problems. Equally, science fiction can be a helpful way of imagining alternative realities, making us re-think assumptions about economy and society that we otherwise take for granted. In this public lecture and launch event for PERC, Professor Ha-Joon Chang argues that science fiction teaches us important lessons about the economy, in particular that it can be changed, that it has been changed, and, most importantly, that it has been changed in the way it has only because some people dared to imagine a different world and fought for it.”