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. [more...]

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 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...]

It is very rich in content and I expect to find myself referring back to it often...They present a wealth of detailed information on the successes and failures of policies across places and through time... The authors are honest about failures... The chapter on Britain, discouragingly entitled “No Theory and Little Execution”  seems a pretty accurate account of the way in which policy here has swayed between free markets and state intervention, but often without much heft behind either. [more...]

Fasteau and Fletcher synthesize a wealth of data and economic history into an incisive analysis of the workings and pitfalls of free trade. They convey all of this in lucid, accessible prose that manages to turn complex technical arguments into pithy, down-to-earth aphorisms. (“Growth is about turning Burkina Faso into South Korea, not about being the most efficient possible Burkina Faso forever,” they write in a tour-de-force debunking of the theory of comparative advantage.) The result is a lucid diagnosis of America’s economic decline and an ambitious, hopeful program for reversing it. [more...]

This is a rich, thought-provoking study that will appeal to readers interested in the practicalities of public policy. Their ambitious book successfully argues for the importance of industrial policies for rational economic planning and calls for the market to be supplemented by economic planning.[more...]

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...]

This book is long, comprehensive, and intellectually sophisticated enough for professional economists. But it’s written in a lively, accessible style, so that those with a business or policy interest in the new tariff debate and why laws like the CHIPS Act are warranted can pick a chapter and learn something... Whatever the ultimate answers to America’s current economic problems, some are likely to be drawn from the ideas Fasteau and Fletcher lay out in their latest work. [more...]

With their exhaustive research, presented facts, and resulting in-depth analysis, co-authors Fletcher and Fasteau are correct in their persuasive reasoning. Any American concerned with America's future direction related to our essential industrial policy should read this book. [more...]

It's a very ambitious book, but I daresay Fasteau and Fletcher pull it off. It's a comprehensive economic and historical argument that economic success requires industrial policy, that America used to do it very well, that our adversaries (read "China") do it today, and that we should get back in the game. I found the theoretical economics surprisingly easy to grasp (these guys write well) and the historical parts (other countries but especially the US) absolutely fascinating. There's a whole history out they don't teach you! [more...]