Industrial Policy

Category: Uncategorized

  • Industrial policy vs. corporate welfare

    For those particularly on the political right or in the mainstream of economic thought, industrial policy inevitably equals direct funding to businesses. As discussed in previous posts, this is a vast oversimplification. Direct subsidies to businesses, particularly in the form of a grant is but one tool in the industrial policy toolkit. (Those on the…

  • Global trade as the solution to global trade

    Don’t have a lot to say on this article, but I am supremely dumbfounded that Canada’s “industrial policy” budget has been followed up with a return to trade negotiations with Mercosur. While I have nothing against Mercosur, it seems like the Canadian government has not received the memo that the neoliberal era is over. Even…

  • Rationales for activist industrial policies

    A question I had in my head today that I thought would be good to write about is this – why do some countries/jurisdictions engage in activist or interventionist industrial policies, as opposed to pacifist industrial policies a la neoclassical economics? While this is not strictly based on the academic evidence, my research and thinking…

  • Canada and innovation – mediocre industrial policy at its finest

    Canada’s national newspaper has published a new article on the “state of innovation” in the country. Quite similar to many past articles it has published on this topic in the past, but let’s explore some of the highlights and then dig into them. A lot to dig into, but let’s expand on some of this…

  • 2023 recession? Time for more industrial policy, not less

    The temptation among mainstream commentators will be that the impending recession requires reduced government spending. This is because unlike a typical recession, this one has been caused by monetary policy to alleviate inflationary pressures. And while this is has mathematical elegance, it is probably wrong. Why? Because it is pretty evident that most of the…

  • Inflation – the impetus for industrial policy (which will be ignored!)

    I’ll try to keep this brief, as it’s only a partial thought. But I have found it profoundly frustrating to follow the discourse in recent weeks/months on inflation with hardly a mention of price controls! I completely appreciate that such an approach is political naive in the current environment. But then again, so was open…

  • Defining industrial policy – not as easy as it seems

    When reviewing my collection of literature on the subject of industrial policy in search of a definition, it quickly dawned on me on how complicated this simple question was. More than likely, I will have to revisit this topic in a future post. But here goes nothing… After reviewing about a dozen or so sources,…

  • Canada and the eternal quest for a foreign economic saviour

    I had to let a few weeks pass after the recent visit of Chancellor Scholz to Canada (where this blog is based). I needed the time to let my anger subside at the recurring theme in Canada’s industrial policy – the zombie-like resilience of the staples trap! But this time it isn’t furs, or timber,…

  • The return of industrial policy? It never really went away

    Recent developments in the US under the Biden Administration, as well the recognition of economic gaps in the wake of Covid-19 across the developed world, have slowly returned the previously exiled (and reviled!) term of “industrial policy” back into the broader public discourse. Governments and parties on both the left and right are increasingly implicitly…