I study the impact of industrial policy on industrial development by considering an important episode during the East Asian miracle: South Korea’s heavy and chemical industry (HCI) drive, 1973–1979. Based on newly assembled data, I use the introduction and termination of industrial policies...

This paper studies a place-based industrial policy (PBIP) aiming to establish industrial clusters in Italy in the 1960s-70s. Combining historical archives spanning one century with administrative data and leveraging exogenous variation in government intervention, we investigate both the...

The transition from traditional labor intensive to modern capital intensive production is a key factor for industrial development. Using half a million observations from Indian manufacturing plants, I analyze the effects of a secular decrease in industrial electricity prices through the lens of...

Colonial trade encouraged the colonies to specialise in primary products. Did this prevent in-dustrialisation in the colonies? And did lack of industrialisation, in turn, help to keep the colonies under control? To answer these questions, we examine the impact of the temporary collapse in trade...

This study explores the impact of industrialization on secondary schooling in 19th century France. As a source of exogenous variation in industrialization across the French territory, it takes advantage of the openings and closures of mines which were supervised by the Ministry of Public Works,...

We study infant industry protection using a dynamic model in which the industry's cost is initially higher than that of foreign competitors. The industry can stochastically lower its cost via learning by doing. Whether the industry has transitioned to low cost is private information. We use a...

We develop a method to measure the incidence of monopolistic markup distortions in the global economy. Using semi-parametric formulas, we measure how trade modifies the deadweight loss of markups through two channels: (1) trade-induced change in markup dispersion, and (2) international...

We examine the ways in which political realities shape industrial policy through the lens of modern political economy. We consider two broad “governance constraints”: i) the political forces that shape how industrial policy is chosen and ii) the ways in which state capacity affects...

A national-champions-related industrial policy has become (again) en vogue among European politicians. Against this background, our work orders different types of national champions along the industry lifecycle. Different types of locally bound externalities appear along the lifecycle. In a...

This paper examines the progress of state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform in the People’s Republic of China. After defining SOEs and considering their scope of operation within the PRC economy, the focus of the paper is on the major reform waves that followed the deterioration of SOE...