Picking winners—seeing which are the industries in which subsidizing efficient producers will produce large externalities via the creation of communities of engineering practice—has never been that difficult. It has been actually winning that is difficult: creating the institutional and political-economic discipline so that the subsidies flow where they should, rather than where the politically powerful wish them to flow. What is nice about Cherif and Hasanov is that they show where and have some good suggestions as to how to make this more general than it has been: Andrew Batson: Rediscovering the Importance of Export Discipline: "The new IMF working paper on industrial policy, by Reda Cherif and Fuad Hasanov, has gotten a lot of notice, and indeed it is very clear, comprehensive, and useful. But for anyone who has already done some reading on the history of successful Asian economies, particularly Taiwan and South Korea, it is not exactly surprising.... Brad DeLong’s 2010 book with Stephen Cohen, The End of Influence: 'Americans like to say scornfully that industrial policy is about “governments picking winners.” Picking winner industries is not that hard—even for governments...
Most countries trying to climb the ladder of quality and industrial sophistication through selective promotion compiled pretty much the same lists at the same time. Even at the leading edge of the technological frontier, the industries that governments are tempted to promote are largely the same ones picked by the analysts and brokers at investment firms such as Merrill Lynch, Nomura, or Rothschild’s.… Picking “winner industries” is not the hard part; winning is. It is difficult to create actual winners, companies that develop into successful competitors.
And that, of course, is where export discipline comes in....
#noted
