ABSTRACT
This book advances two central propositions with novel implications for industrial policy. The first is that industrial policies are necessary, but in ways that break with the traditional efficiency-detracting forms of intervention, such as state hand-outs to firms, the protection of target industries, nationalization, or strict regulation of markets. The suggestion is that public policy should focus on the framework conditions of entrepreneurship and competitiveness. This ranges from the quality of infrastructure, labour markets, and knowledge environments, to the supply of business services and institutionalized support for firms. An added implicit suggestion is that, in delivering such support, the state should become one among several institutions of coordination and regulation of business life. These might include trade associations, labor organizations, development agencies, business service centers, and so on. Thus industrial policy is couched in terms of a broadly based infrastructural policy, in the hands of a coordinated set of specialized agencies.
