In a remarkable and comprehensive book, Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher provide a theoretical, historical, and up-to-date review of industrial policies, in the United States and elsewhere, as well as a decent summary of the main Biden initiatives: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act, as of late 2023. Their goal is to justify, defend, and extend the case for industrial policies, which they do with admirably fair attention to unsuccessful past cases. Mine in this essay is narrower: mainly to describe the specific goals of President Biden’s programs, and to assess the likelihood of success given their structure and methods. [more...]
Prof. James K. Galbraith
Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations,
LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin
I’ve been dipping into the proofs of a substantial book, Industrial Policy for the United States by Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher, due out in September. It will prove a significant resource for anybody interested in the issue. The book starts with the economic case for strategic government interventions in the supply side structure, arguments that have been gaining traction recently as the ultra-free marketism paradigm fades in the US and elsewhere. The authors focus particularly on increasing returns and technological innovation. They bring a certain zero-sum mentality to the analysis – the US must win, other countries must lose – which I don’t share; the technological frontier is broad and granular. But the demolition of the idea that a ‘free’ market is the way to organize the economy at a time of significant structural change is spot on. [more...]
Prof. Dame Diane Coyle
Bennett Professor of Public Policy and Co-Director of the
Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Cambridge University
Although many (including this writer) will reject its conclusions, Fasteau and Fletcher’s compendium, Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries, will serve as the standard reference work on industrial policy in the foreseeable future. Its 800 pages provide a thorough survey of all the major economies’ experience with government planning, including a sober assessment of successes and failures... [B]elongs in the library of every policymaker concerned about the state of U.S. industry. [more...]
David P. Goldman
The American Conservative
Marc Fasteau and Bay Area author Ian Fletcher’s new book Industrial Policy for the United States is so well written that it has you believing. Until you realize there is not a single reference, even in the index, to the world’s great economists, all of whom said nations should not have an industrial policy: Adam Smith (1776), F.A. Hayek (Nobel), and Milton Friedman (Nobel). Then you realize there are no references to the basic laws of economics, such as [more...]