“Professor Reka Juhasz’s primary research focus is on the effects of industrial policy and how governments can improve the efficacy of these policies to foster economic growth. As global trade shifts, understanding how industrial policy can drive costs and inflation has implications for monetary policy, one of the Bank’s core functions. More broadly, her research also considers international trade, economic history, growth and development. Dr. Juhasz is published in top economic journals and has had a meaningful impact as a mentor in her department. She is also the co-founder of The Industrial Policy Group and was awarded the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize in 2016.”

“Last century, President Richard Nixon’s threat to withdraw U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula motivated government support for military-relevant industries in South Korea, which caused them to nearly double from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, according to research by Nathan Lane, an economist at the University of Oxford.”

“After decades of scepticism toward industrial policy by economists and policymakers, there is renewed debate and research about the costs and benefits of industrial policy (Juhász et al. 2023, Millot and Rawdanowicz 2024).”

“For everyone interested in what makes industrial policy so powerful and how to design a good industrial policy, I highly recommend a recent overview by Réka Juhász and Nathan Lane.”

“The economic argument for the use of industrial policy is to correct market failures and coordination failures, and introduce the provision of a specific public activity for public welfare.”

The return of industrial policy has turned attention to researchers who began publishing about its importance years before the current trend. As a result, Réka Juhász, an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia and co-founder of the Industrial Policy Group, has become a frequently mentioned figure in the Western economic press. Their 2023 study, co-authored with Dani Rodrik and Nathan J. Lane, has become one of the most frequently cited works in the new wave of industrial policy research.

“They describe a situation which the appropriate form of subsidy would not be for the firms that succeed in producing the desired product, instead for firms that fail. The mechanism would be a “repayable advance” from the government, where successful firms need to repay the advance, but firms that fail to compete in the market do not need to repay.”

Goldberg et al. (2024) examine the history of government support for the semiconductor industry in many nations and present new evidence on the extent to which learning-by-doing, a traditional economic rationale for subsidizing an industry’s growth, may justify such subsidies.

Juhász joins Friday Morning by Partizan Podcast to comment on Draghi's EU Competitiveness report.

"People look at the history of industrial policy in Latin America and say "We've supported this policy for decades, even though we've gotten very little return." And this seems kind of intriguing: how could the formulators of these actions not know? The answer, of course, is that they probably knew. But, politically, it was extremely difficult to remove protection."

In the last episode of The Ballpark, Lane joins the Phelan US Centre to talk about industrial policy in the United States and its history, including recent policies from the Biden administration, like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act.

“I think what both IRA and CHIPS have done is just to change the nature of the conversation around what state involvement in the economy looks like (…) whoever the incoming president is going to be, the status quo looks different.”

“The idea that industrial policy can never work is simply an untenable position in light of recent research in economics.”

“A paper on “The New Economics of Industrial Policy,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and co-authored by Réka Juhász, Nathan Lane, and Dani Rodrik, shows a steep increase in industrial policy interventions worldwide, from 228 in 2017 to 1,568 in 2022 — predominantly in high-income countries (probably because they have more fiscal room). This also lets the rest of the world accuse them of hypocrisy. “

“Increased interest in industrial policy is reflected in real data. Empirical evidence supports this renewed focus on industrial policy. A novel approach put forward by Juhász et al. (2023) that utilizes machine-learning techniques to automatically classify industrial policies based on common policy descriptions over a large dataset of policy documents, shows that industrial policy measures have doubled globally between 2009 and 2019”

“Industrial policy is back in advanced economies, but so are questions about its merits, drawbacks, and practicality. Yet these debates don’t address the wide variation in global practice, why policies succeed or fail, or which policies are feasible in the real world. Although new literature has started to update our empirical understanding of these policies, we argue that this “new economics of industrial policy” (Juhász, Lane, and Rodrik, forthcoming) calls for serious consideration of the political forces behind policymaking.”

"Right now, in the post-global financial crisis era, and particularly post-Covid, we are seeing the return of industrial policy but it’s taking a different form from the past — it is far more financialised now, it tries to work within the parameters and institutions of a globalised world and it is much more outward-oriented."

Nathan talked to the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen about the rise of industrial policies.

“[Industrial Policy] has never completely gone away. They just called it something else. It’s called industrial policy when you don’t like it, and money for research and development or entrepreneurial policy when you like it.”

Industrial policy has traditionally focused on manufacturing”, it is the service sector that now dominates. Thus, “governments are likely to look beyond manufacturing as they consider productivity-enhancing ‘industrial’ policies in the future”.

“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?

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.”