Recent Evidence on Private Sector Capabilities, Trade Liberalization, Foreign Direct Investment, and Deregulation Are Not Enough

This paper summarizes new empirical findings concerning the magnitude of market failures affecting industrial performance and innovation, firm dynamics after economic policy reforms, and the effectiveness of popular government interventions designed to promote exports and foreign direct investment (FDI). Regarding the effectiveness of public subsidies and targeted services, new evidence suggests that innovation policies targeting both patentable and non-patentable innovations, might yield higher returns in terms of innovative activity if they are broadly diversified across products within broad industrial categories, and revealed comparative advantage by itself provides little guidance as to what these innovative sectors might be. In general, efforts to promote exports and FDI seem to be effective on their own terms when the returns to public expenditures in these areas are measured by their effects on the value of exports and FDI inflows. However, there is significant heterogeneity both across regions and across types of expenditures. Overall, the recent research suggests that trade reforms and deregulation are not enough to sustain long-term development.