The Textbook Case for Industrial Policy: Theory Meets Data

Dominick Bartelme (), Arnaud Costinot, Dave Donaldson and Andres Rodriguez-Clare

No 26193, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The textbook case for industrial policy is well understood. If some sectors are subject to external economies of scale, whereas others are not, a government should subsidize the first group of sectors at the expense of the second. The empirical relevance of this argument, however, remains unclear. In this paper we develop a strategy to estimate sector-level economies of scale and evaluate the gains from such policy interventions in an open economy. Our benchmark results point towards significant and heterogeneous economies of scale across manufacturing sectors, but only modest gains from industrial policy, below 1% of GDP on average. Though these gains can be larger in some of the alternative environments that we consider, they are always smaller than the gains from optimal trade policy.

JEL-codes: F1 F10 F11 F12 F13 F14 F17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (44)

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Working Paper: The Textbook Case for Industrial Policy: Theory Meets Data (2019)
Working Paper: The Textbook Case for Industrial Policy: Theory Meets Data
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