This course revolves around solutions to four critical challenges that our economies face: restoring the middle class, promoting innovation, reducing global poverty, and accelerating the green transition. What connects these challenges is the need to catalyze the requisite structural transformation of the economy. Traditionally, governments have employed a mix of industrial, innovation, and place-based policies to foster structural change. We will consider the lessons of economic history and comparative evidence from national experiences on the use of industrial policies. We will examine how the effectiveness and accountability of such policies can be enhanced and the range of goals they can achieve broadened. We will then discuss the theory and design of new approaches that update traditional industrial policy instruments, focusing in particular on iterative, collaborative, experimental modes of governance.
Prerequisites: No economics background is required for enrollment in this course.