Using an extensive database of non-macroeconomic state interventions implemented since the global economic crisis began, this paper provides quantitative evidence on the resort to selectivity by several major economic powers. The propensity to promote certain sectors, certain firms within sectors, and domestic over commercial interests is contrasted across jurisdictions. At least one prominent contention in the industrial policy literature is not borne out in the data, and certain cross-country and cross-sectoral variations found here could benefit from further analysis. A crisis-era shift towards selectivity and away from the ‘level playing field’ can be detected in the major trading nations.
The recent Great Recession has triggered substantial government intervention - not all of it macroeconomic. This article presents evidence that the sectoral incidence and forms of government intervention appear to have changed from pre-crisis regularities. Once the commercial significance of a sector is taken into account, pre-crisis measures of trade policy intervention poorly predict the crisis-era sectoral incidence of discriminatory state measures imposed by Asian governments. Qualitative evidence focusing on three key countries in Asia - China, Japan, and South Korea - is also marshaled to sustain the contention that Asian governments have used the recent economic crisis to reinvigorate industrial policies, targeting apparent growth poles and apparently environmentally friendly technologies and sectors. Implications for the expansion of World Trade Organization rules and their effectiveness are discussed.
The effects of active labour market policies (ALMP) on individual employment chances and earnings are evaluated by nonparametric instrumental variables based on Swiss administrative data with detailed re-gional information. Using an exogenous variation in the participation probabilities across fairly autono-mous regional units (cantons) generated by the federal government, we identify the effects of ALMP by comparing individuals living in the same local labour market but in different cantons. Taking account of small sample problems occurring in IV estimation, our results suggest that ALMP increases individual employment probabilities by about 15% in the short term for a weighted subpopulation of compliers. Download Discussion Paper: (pdf, 1034 kb)
