Industrial Policy and Growth

The paper highlights how the rationales and instruments of industrial policy have changed since the 1960s. It finds that theories of industrialization have come full circle, as many of the assumptions behind the market failure paradigm have made a comeback. The policy implications of these theories, however, have not been similarly resurrected. It makes an explicit comparison between the strategies of East Asia and Latin America, and reviews the explanations for their divergent performance. It identifies a “back to the future” quality of Latin America’s situation, pointing to the region’s balance of payments constraint and dependence on commodity-like industrial products.