Young was described as "an outstanding economist by any yardstick" by the New Zealand Association of Economics. He wrote papers on the impact of uncertainty on international trade and finance, and the effects on welfare of trade restrictions. With Stephen Magee from UTA and William A. Brock, he investigated the political economy of trade policy, leading to their book, Black hole tariffs and endogenous redistribution theory, published in 1989 by Cambridge University Press. Young was also interested in governance, and the interactions of culture, economic behaviour and legal processes, as exemplified by his papers comparing the economies of China and India, and also Asian and Western economies.
