Thread by @Noahpinion

1/Lots of people are getting interested in industrial policy. That's a good thing.

Here is a reading list of good books about industrial policy.

2/The best book to start with is "Concrete Economics". It's not about HOW to do industrial policy. It's about WHY to do it.

amazon.com/Concrete-Econo…

3/For the history of industrial policy, the best book to start with is "How Asia Works".

It's about how Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China got rich (while Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand have lagged somewhat).

amazon.com/How-Asia-Works…

4/If you want to go deeper on the history of East Asian industrial policy, check out "MITI and the Japanese Miracle".

amazon.com/MITI-Japanese-…

5/Also, read "The Park Chung Hee Era". It's very long, but it's a collection of essays, so you can read selections.

amazon.com/Park-Chung-Hee…

6/But how do you do industrial policy in a country that's already rich?

"Jump-Starting America" is about how to use science policy to revitalize the U.S. economy and spread out growth regionally.

amazon.com/Jump-Starting-…

7/"Our Towns" profiles small American cities that have successfully turned themselves around, and which policies they have in common:

amazon.com/Our-Towns-000-…

8/And of course if you really want to go deep, you can read "The National System of Political Economy". It's an old classic.

amazon.com/National-Syste…

9/And I hear "Kicking Away the Ladder" is good, but have never read it.

amazon.com/Kicking-Away-L…

10/"Industrial Policy for the Twenty-First Century" is a paper by Dani Rodrik offering a theory of how industrial policy works:

drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/publications/i…

11/And here is a recent paper trying to distill the lessons of the "ARPA Model" of mission-oriented research:

nber.org/papers/w24674

12/And of course you should read "The Entrepreneurial State", which is another great book about how government can promote innovation:

amazon.com/Entrepreneuria…

13/I'll add more later, but this should be more than enough to get you started!

14/A good book about how industrial policy can fail is "Can Japan Compete?". It's about how Japan's legendary MITI ran off the rails in the 80s and stopped being effective. A good cautionary tale.

amazon.com/Can-Japan-Comp…