Industrial policies: handle with care

Join our climaTRACES Lab workshop

Speaker: Samuel Pienknagura, Senior Economist, International Monetary Fund

Industrial policies have returned to the centre of economic and geopolitical debates. This paper reassesses their effectiveness, examining when and how they generate economic gains. While impacts are generally modest and uneven, industrial policies perform best when targeting highly distorted upstream sectors with carefully chosen instruments. By contrast, broad-based interventions risk high fiscal costs, unintended spill overs and increased economic fragmentation. The findings emphasise that structural reforms often dominate industrial policy in terms of efficiency and long-run performance.

The weekly climaTRACES workshops, organised by Kamiar Mohaddes and Henning Zschietzschmann, are attended by a diverse group of people from economics, geography, politics, engineering, business, earth sciences, natural sciences and history, generating interdisciplinary discussion. One person leads the session, on either a paper they have written, a work in progress or just an idea they have and would like feedback on. This is also an opportunity for people to find our more about the team on what climaTRACES have been up to and what future events and research projects are being developed.

Register

No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Henning Zschietzshmann.

Please note, this workshop is an in-person event but in case you are not able to attend, you can also join the workshop virtually on Zoom.