“When we think of industrial policy, we tend to look to the East Asian miracle. But for western economies there is a lot more to be learned from our own experience,” says Réka Juhász, assistant professor of economics at the University of British Columbia and co-founder of The Industrial Policy Group.

“Questions around industrial policy have turned from ‘whether’ (i.e. ‘should governments carry out industrial policy?’) to ‘how’ (‘how should industrial policy be carried out?’).”

In their new column, Nathan Lane, along with Cristina Caffarra, discusses how industrial policy relates to competition policy.

``In recent years, there has been a revival of scholarly interest in industrial policy [..] and a substantial body of research has emerged that offers more robust empirical evidence on the functioning and impacts of industrial policy (see Juhász et al. (2023)). ‘‘

Zhao Zhongxiu, president of the Univesity of International Business and Economics, cites Juhász et al. (2023) in his ChinaDaily Op-Ed.

“[…] industrial policy can work if it is designed in the right way.” Lane’s recent paper on South Korea’s large-scale industrial investment is referenced in The Economist.

“Since the 1980s, industrial policy has largely fallen out of favor among policymakers. Among economists, it's been called a "taboo" subject, and "one of the most toxic phrases" in economics. … On today's show, Réka takes us on a fun, nerdy journey to explain the theory behind industrial policy, why it's so controversial, and where President Biden's huge experiment might be headed.”

IPG work featured throughout Financial Times interview on industrial policy with Dani Rodrik. Including joint work on the New Economics of Industrial Policy, Juhász’s work on infant industry, and Lane’s work on South Korea.

“The new economics of industrial policy, as put forward by Reka Juhasz of the University of British Columbia, Nathan Lane of the University of Oxford and Mr Rodrik in a paper this year, rests on the idea that such problems can either be solved or have been exaggerated. A disciplined government that cuts off bad investment can avoid waste. Clarity and transparency when it comes to goals will help politicians jettison failing companies.”

IPG portfolio featured in the "Homeland Economics" Issue of The Economist: “A new paper, by Réka Juhász of the University of British Columbia, Nathan Lane and Emily Oehlsen of Oxford University, and Verónica C. Pérez of Boston University, tracks industrial-policy interventions over time. They find a surge in 2021 and 2022.”

“Many of us have a vague sense of what industrial policy means, and we might even have an opinion about the specific forms it can take. But that fuzziness around even the definition of industrial policy has made studying it — and learning what makes industrial policy succeed and fail — difficult. … Dr. Réka Juhász is trying to change that.”

Rohan Sandhu discusses “Bottom-Up Bidenomics” and IPG work in his Time editorial: “This bottom-up approach is in line with my colleague Dani Rodrik’s recent paper, with Nathan Lane and Reka Juhasz, reviewing evidence around the structures that make industrial policies successful.”

“There is a lot of taxpayer money going into propping up industry in the U.S. From semiconductor chip fabrication in Arizona to green hydrogen plants in California. Is this smart policy? Today on the Indicator, our guests debate! We're joined by Réka Juhász, economist at the University of British Columbia and Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.”

The future of industrial policy - a conversation with Nathan Lane on “The Week That Was in Europe” podcast. Lane discusses issues surrounding industrial policy and recent policymaking in Europe.

Bloomberg’s Adrian Wooldridge cites Juhász et al (2022) and Juhász et al. (2023) in his critical editorial on global industrial policy. The long-form piece on new trends in industrial policy features data from Juhász, Lane, Oehlsen, and Peréz (2022). And mentions IPG’s work with Dani Rodrik (Juhász et al. 2023).

“…Dani Rodrik, and together with two other academics, Juhász and Lane, he's written an article called “The New Economics of Industrial Policy,” and that seems incredibly relevant in the current discussion. It also looks at East Asia's experience in the 1970s. I guess there's a lot to learn from that.”

Nathan Lane: “It’s a very uncomfortable thing that’s going on, which is economics made this empirical turn the past couple of decades, and people like myself, who are not attached ideologically to the Washington Consensus, said, ‘We’re just empiricists. Let’s explore this.’ People said, ‘Don’t do that.’ People get extremely reactive to even asking the question of whether it works.”

“A new review of the economic literature points to how industrial policy can succeed as well as to how it can fail. “The New Economics of Industrial Policy,” issued as a working paper last month, is a draft of an article for the Annual Review of Economics. It’s by Reka Juhasz of the University of British Columbia, Nathan J. Lane of the University of Oxford and Dani Rodrik of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.”

“The truth is that all of this still represents only a few tiny slivers of knowledge, and economists as a whole have only begun to scratch the surface of this incredibly important and very timely topic. But at least a few are trying. If and when the global rise of industrial policy eventually forces economists to study it en masse, Réka Juhász, Nathan Lane, and Dani Rodrik will be remembered as the pioneers who broke ground on the topic even before it was cool and sexy.”

In the past, economists assessing the performance of industrial policies often focused on indicators such as import tariffs, capturing only limited dimensions of such measures and conflating their objectives with others. A new generation of research efforts takes a more productive approach – and reaches very different conclusions.

“ ‘The debate is about how to intervene, not whether intervention is necessary,’ says economist Reka Juhasz , co-founder of the Industrial Policy Group.”

Adam A. Millsa reviews IPG’s work with Dani Rodrik in their critical editorial on Industrial Policy in Forbes Magazine. We note, it conflates our formal definition for normative claims about industrial policy’s success. Sadly, it mistakes our conversation around industrial policy’s “portfolio problem” and misapplies it to a conversation about index funds. We note this to avoid confusion.

In the 1970s, South Korea suddenly started and stopped an industrial policy while in the middle of two political crises. Nathan Lane (University of Oxford) explains the Heavy and Chemical Industry Drive as well as new research showing the industrial policy’s impact on South Korean firms, workers, exports, and the country’s comparative advantage (34:55).

“Elsewhere, Réka Juhász of the University of British Columbia and Nathan Lane of Oxford University have founded the Industrial Policy Group to conduct empirical research; it has compiled a database of all potential industrial policy actions from 2009 to 2020.”

Daron Acemoglu writes about the return of industrial policy in the United States: “When industry means hard work.” Discusses IPG research in the context of new U.S. industrial policy.

Our Collaboration with UNIDO, complete brief on our approach to industrial policy classification.

Collaboration with UNIDO. A novel approach to policy classification yields new insights.

The Conversations on Transformation series, narrated by Tim Phillips, investigates some of the most important new research in structural transformation, growth and economic development.

Industrial policy was once so out of fashion that it was jokingly called “the policy that shall not be named.” Now it’s back in a big way. On issues ranging from clean energy to semiconductors to Covid-19, governments are trying to improve the performance of key business sectors. Can they manage to do so without subverting competition and subsidizing special interests?

The most common forms of industrial policy are trade finance measures, state loans, and financial grants. Industrial policy is globally concentrated, and more prevalent in higher-income countries. Tariffs are no longer the principal instrument of industrial policy. Industrial policy is most commonly used in heavy and high-tech industries.

Nathan Lane and a partner from the University of British Columbia have started The Industrial Policy Group, an empirical research lab that aims to deliver core empirical research surrounding industrial policy, and make industrial policy a serious object of economic study.

The Napoleonic Blockade offered an opportunity for economists to see whether temporary protection from imports can help industrial development. Réka Juhász (Columbia University) joins to discuss her research into whether French regions better protected from trade with the British during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) did better in mechanized cotton spinning – the era’s frontier industry – than more exposed regions.

An op-ed on Mariana Mazzucato, Rainer Kattel, Josh Ryan-Collins vision of industrial policy in the Boston Review. While this call for moonshots is stirring, it ultimately says too little about how to turn this vision into reality.

“A very stimulating conversation with Nathan Lane. Nathan is an empirical economist and an Associate Professor of economics at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the political economy of development, the economics of the state, and Industrial Policy. Nathan's work combines new methods from data science and traditional micro-data to understand questions at the heart of economic development -in particular, industrial development.”