Industrial Policy Research Articles

Evaluation of the Sports Industry Policy in China During the 2010-2024 Period

The sports industry policies in China are essential instruments for guiding the sector's development, promoting quality improvement, and bolstering China's position as a sports powerhouse. This study comprehensively examines provincial-level sports policy documents from 2010 to 2024, utilizing the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model and social network analysis to investigate policy evolution and thematic shifts over time. Despite significant progress, the sports industry faces structural imbalances, limited innovation capacity, and the need for tailored policy responses. Methodologically, this research applies advanced text analysis techniques to identify core themes and developmental trajectories in policy content, analyzing data from 103 official documents across various policy stages. The results reveal that: (1) policy themes are decreasing in number but are increasingly specialized and focused; (2) policy emphasis has shifted from broad coordination to precise, field-specific improvements, aligning with evolving economic and social needs; (3) policy evolution follows multiple trajectories, incorporating aspects such as industry planning, financial incentives, market expansion, service optimization, and collaborative innovation. These insights contribute to the discourse on high-quality development in China’s sports industry and highlight strategic policy recommendations, such as refining planning directions, deepening policy content, and standardizing industry practices.

U.S. New Industrial Policy Under the Administration of President J. Biden

The article is devoted to the new industrial policy in the U.S. under the administration of J. Biden. In the first part, four historical traditions of U.S. industrial policy are described. The author attempts to identify the reasons for reindustrialization and reshoring in the USA. Subsequently, the author focuses on Bidenomics – an economic policy aimed at reviving the industrial power of the USA. The paper discusses its features, differences from the neoliberal course, as well as intermediate results and prospects of the new industrial policy. Special attention is paid to the position of Pentagon.

Factors of Foreign Trade Resilience of European Countries in the Context of Global Competition: the Role of Intra-industry Trade

The article dwells onto the identification and quantitative assessment of the factors of the European countries’ bilateral trade resilience. The factors were studied separately for two groups, namely those responsible for maintaining of trade linkages and those characterising their ability to recover after external shocks. The paper covers only the first group of factors that were furtherly split onto inherent (endogenous) and acquired (exogenous). The inherent factors include geographical proximity and historical linkages, whereas acquired factors consist of bilateral trade intensity and degree of intra-industry trade between a pair of countries. Identifying factors that ensure resistance to foreign trade shocks using the example of relations within Europe is useful because from a historical and geographical point of view, this region is an example of the deep development of trade relations. Therefore, the identified factors will be significant for conducting research in the case of other countries. The indicators allowing for the factors’ assessment are calculated for the European states, except Turkey, Russia and several microstates. The conclusion is drawn that it is only degree of intra-industry trade that is responsible for preserving bilateral trade flows during crises. The results obtained suggest that upgrading intra-industry trade through participation in global value chains is necessary for trade resilience. This takeaway is critical for the foreign trade and industrial policies’ recalibration both in Europe and other regions, such as Africa and the Middle East.

К вопросу о формировании промышленной политики на уровне региона

The article deals with the development of industrial policy on the level of the region. In the course of the study, the basic principles were formed on the basis of which it is possible to build the development of various elements of both investment and innovation infrastructure for the interaction of administrative resources at the federal and regional levels. The priorities of the industrial development of the region are formulated. Recommendations in the field of structural and investment policy are given. The necessity of clustering the industrial potential of the region is proved. The necessity of developing regional support based on an individual regional approach in the field of industrial potential development is substantiated. The main tasks of regional development in the field of industrial policy implementation are formulated.

Analyzing industrial policy portfolios

AbstractIndustrial policy has regained political attention due to the challenges associated with global market integration, technological changes, and the need for sustainable transformation. However, the lack of a consistent understanding of industrial policy hampers systematic comparisons. This paper develops a novel concept of industrial policy portfolios that captures different dimensions of industrial policy outputs across countries and over time. We illustrate this approach by comparing the policy dynamics in the United States and Germany over the last four decades and show that despite similar dynamics of policy growth, the countries display pronounced variation in the areas and instruments they prioritized.

Green economic planning for rapid decarbonisation

ABSTRACT Sustainable futures require deep social and economic transformations to address climate change adequately. The current landscape of intergovernmental and market-based coordination is not delivering this outcome. In response, political economic scholarship is congregating around the concept of the green state as a corrective to the status quo. In spite of this resurgence of interest in the green state, much research takes place in issue-specific silos without exploring synergies between them. Our contribution is to call for an integrative agenda focused on ‘green economic planning’, a form of state-led decarbonisation whereby the state designs and implements structural complementarities between macro-financial architectures, industrial policy, and private sector incentives. Our evidence for this approach is taken from historical cases of indicative planning in post-war democracies, contemporary cases of sectoral planning by states, and finally, planning by multinational corporations. We draw not only on political economy but also on scholarship in the fields of business, environment, energy and economic history. The upshot is a new research agenda focusing on state planning capacity in hierarchical coordination institutions and multinational corporations as research laboratories for the study of the organisational and technological infrastructure needed for state planning.

Research on Transformation and Upgrading of Equipment Manufacturing Industry and Optimization of Tax Policy Discrepancy: Case of Hebei Province

Operating income of Hebei equipment manufacturing industry exceeded one trillion yuan. In order to further promote the transformation and upgrading, in recent years, the Hebei Provincial Tax Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation has implemented and continued a series of national tax support policies and achieved phased results. However, due to some objective and realistic factors, Hebei equipment manufacturing industry is still lacking. This research takes different stages of enterprise operation as nodes, and gradually sorts out, studies and analyzes the current tax policies according to the links. The results highlight the effectiveness mechanism of the current tax policies for the development of equipment manufacturing industry based on the research. Moreover, based on a variety of real data found in this paper, the data of Hebei equipment manufacturing industry is compared in multiple dimensions to objectively present problems and shortcomings. This paper focuses on the transformation and upgrading of Hebei equipment manufacturing industry and tax policy in a small-cut view and makes policy optimization suggestions based on the tax policy gap, in order to provide reference for the better development of Hebei equipment manufacturing industry.

Industrial Land Protection and Allocation Efficiency: Evidence from Guangdong, China

Industrial land allocation in China has been distorted for a long time by local governments providing land at a low price to attract manufacturing activities. This study explores whether an industrial land protection policy can reduce the distortions and, hence, improve land allocation efficiency in China. Using industrial land zoning and protection policies adopted in some cities in Guangdong province, this study finds that industrial land allocation efficiency is indeed improved after the implementation of protection policies, reflected in higher land prices and greater land use intensity. However, the improvement is smaller for industrial land provided to advanced manufacturing industries, indicating that local governments continue to rely on a strategy of offering cheap land to compete for high-end manufacturing activities. Further analysis suggests that the adoption of industrial land protection in one region generates a positive spillover effect on industrial land allocation efficiency in neighboring regions. Overall, this study provides new evidence on the effectiveness of industrial land protection.

Information‐Sharing Strategies Based on Trust Risks Under a Governmental Incentive Mechanism

ABSTRACTDue to swift shifts in market demand and variable production capacities within the chip industry, trust risks between upstream and downstream entities can readily develop, leading to challenges in information sharing. To tackle this challenge, this paper develops a two‐level evolutionary game model between vehicle manufacturers and chip suppliers. It examines the effects of government rewards and penalties, trust risks, and spillover benefits from information sharing on the strategic decisions of both parties. Furthermore, the paper investigates system evolution strategies under three distinct government policies: forced, fair, and favored. The findings show that as trust risks escalate, both entities in the supply chain tend to withhold information due to concerns over losing their unique competitive advantages. However, enhancing spillover benefits through information sharing positively impacts the mitigation of trust risks. Numerical simulations demonstrate that while a government‐forced policy with increased penalties may boost information sharing in the short term, it proves less effective over the long term. Conversely, preferred rewards and subsidies under equitable policies can significantly boost one party's readiness to share information, thus enhancing cooperation between the two parties. The paper also offers countermeasures and recommendations. For instance, it suggests that upstream and downstream enterprises should not only foster mutual trust but also vigilantly track government policy directions to develop effective information‐sharing strategies. Furthermore, government industrial policies should fully consider the actual market conditions to alleviate trust risks between upstream and downstream entities and promote information sharing among enterprises.

World War II and Industrialization Policies in Latin America: The Cases of Argentina and Brazil

Raúl Prebisch and Celso Furtado were two important contributors to development economics and to the theories and policies defended by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC). In this article, we argue that understanding their ideas, and how industrialization became a key concern, requires paying closer attention to the geopolitical changes brought by World War II. We discuss how Argentina and Brazil, their home countries, navigated the troubled waters brought by the war and the international trade disruptions and turned state-led industrialization into a key development strategy. After the war, the United States became the new hegemonic power and adopted a universalist foreign policy, based on the newly created international agencies. At home, the internationalist businessmen promoted the partnership capitalism that became central to the foreign policy during the Truman administration and onward, making industrialization a key interest. Internationalism was also what Latin American countries used to counteract the US hegemony even before the war, which culminated in the creation of ECLAC after the war. The intellectual paths of Prebisch and Furtado toward industrialization policies were shaped by the changing international order and by local developments in their countries including the building of a more scientific statistical system that would better help the state to design development policies.

Return-to-hometown entrepreneurship and employment of low-income households: Evidence from national returned entrepreneurial enterprise data of China

Employment is widely regarded as the most effective approach for eradicating poverty among low-income groups and preventing them from returning to poverty. Using national returned entrepreneurial enterprise data of China, this study empirically analyzes how “return-to-hometown entrepreneurship (RHE)” achieves antipoverty through a mediation effect model that incorporates moderating effects. Our findings reveal that: (1) RHE considerably enhances employment in low-income households. In particular, annual income and enterprise investment scale have a substantial positive impact on boosting the employment of low-income households. (2) Development- and value-oriented enterprises boost employment of low-income households more than survival-oriented enterprises. (3) The mechanism analysis indicates that entrepreneurship training plays a positive moderating role between the income of enterprises and the number of employed low-income households. Tax relief, loan guarantees, and industrial support policies have played multimediating roles in achieving antipoverty by RHE. These findings indicate that an effective interface between poverty alleviation and rural revitalization requires the government to attract additional high-quality RHE enterprises and actively fulfill its important institutional role in entrepreneurial training and various return-to-hometown entrepreneurial support policies.

Next Generation of US Policies for Industrial Innovation

Forecasts project that industry will be the highest emitting sector in the United States by 2030. While recent legislation and programs have boosted efforts to decarbonize and bolster the competitiveness of the U.S. industrial sector, the programs must continue and additional action is needed. This note provides an overview of many industrial policy tools federal and state policymakers can use to secure the future of U.S. industries, ranging from continuation and expansion of existing tax credits, procurement policies, and grant programs to new policies, including demand-side and market-based policies.

Natural resource use, industrialization and climate change in Africa: Blueprints for sustainable regional development

Climate crisis continue to animate environmental policy debate and remains a fundamental global concern. While natural resources use and industrialization are main drivers of climate change especially in developing countries like Africa, previous empirical studies have failed to analyze the simultaneous effect of both on climate change. To close this gap, the current study investigates the relationship between natural resources use, industrialization and climate change in Africa. Specifically, this study analyzes the effect of natural resources rents and value added in manufacturing on carbon dioxide emissions. Addressing these issues is important, as the implications of natural resources extraction and industrial development on environmental sustainability cannot be underestimated. This paper is very relevant because of the limited research on comprehensive frameworks that integrate natural resources use with industrialization policies specific to Africa. Using data from 2005 to 2022 for 45 African countries obtained from the African Infrastructural and World Bank databases, and employing the Cross-Sectional Feasible Generalized Least Squares, Driscoll-Kraay effects, Dynamic Driscoll-Kraay effects and Panel Quantile on Quantile regression techniques, the empirical findings revealed that natural resources rents and industrialization adversely contribute to climate change in Africa. Quantitative results show that a 1% increase in natural resource rents increased carbon dioxide emissions by 0.000103% for both Feasible Generalized Least Squares and Driscoll-Kraay estimates and by 0.00813% for the Dynamic Driscoll-Kraay estimates. Furthermore, a 1% increase in value added in manufacturing led to a 0.377% increase in carbon dioxide emissions for both Feasible Generalized Least Squares and Driscoll-Kraay estimates and a 0.157% increase for Dynamic Driscoll-Kraay estimates. The result also shows that the effect of natural resource extraction and industrialization on climate change become negative at both the 25% quantile and 50% quantile. However, this turning point becomes nullified at the 75% and at 90% quantiles. Africa should adopt a green path to natural resource use and industrialization.

Study on the Economies of Scale Effect of Biomedical Industry Agglomeration in the Yanatze River Delta

As one of the most active areas in China's economic development, the biomedical industry gathers and develops here, and gradually forms a competitive industrial cluster. As one of the important characteristics of industrial agglomeration, economies of scale effect is of great significance for enhancing industrial competitiveness and promoting regional economic development. This study conducted an in-depth analysis of the economies of scale effect of the biomedical industry agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta, explored the specific manifestation and causes of the economies of scale effect by sorting out the current situation of industrial agglomeration, and further analyzed the impact of technological innovation, cost saving, market expansion, brand effect, industrial chain synergy and policy support on industrial agglomeration. It is found that the agglomeration of biomedicine industry in the Yangtze River Delta has significantly promoted the expansion of industrial scale and the improvement of efficiency, and has a positive effect on regional economic development.

Balikpapan as a Developmental Environmentalist City: A Stratification Economics Approach

The world is now more unsustainable as it has become less inclusive. Developmental environmentalism, a new approach to industrial policy, has increasingly been advocated as alternative development. But, does this developmentalism reduce urban inequalities? How has the implementation of industrial policy reflecting this developmentalist orientation shaped urban socio-ecological experiences? Stratification economics can provide new answers to these questions by redressing methodological problems in existing studies that have attempted to address these puzzles. Based on this approach and data collected from Indonesia’s oil city, Balikpapan, the results suggest that developmental environmentalism may be able to drive growth, but it has also institutionalised social stratification and reinforced unsustainability.

The Development Prospects and Future Trends of China's Badminton Industry Under the Guidance of Sports Industry Policies

The Development Prospects and Future Trends of China's Badminton Industry Under the Guidance of Sports Industry Policies

Competition Policy in Media and Content Industry: Case Studies and Implications for Regulators

ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of some of the most high-profile mergers between major media and content corporations, both in domestic and international scope. After reviewing the market situation at the time of each merger and the concerns around potentially anti-competitive consequences, we examine the conditions under which the proposed mergers were approved. In doing so, we summarise the views competition authorities had about the proposed mergers and draw some implications for regulators and potential applicants in future mergers in the media and content industry.

Is net zero net positive? – Opportunities and challenges for pursuing a socio-economically sensitive net-zero transition for India

ABSTRACT At COP26 in Glasgow, India announced a long-term ambition to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2070. Existing emissions-economy modelling studies highlight that India’s emissions show no sign of peaking before mid-century and will not reach net zero by 2070 in a business-as-usual scenario with current policies. Using a mixed methodology of expert elicitation and system dynamics modelling, this article examines the policy gap that needs to be bridged for India to realize its net zero by 2070 commitment. The study discusses a socio-economically sensitive policy mix that could set India on a trajectory to peak its emissions in a decade and zero out its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by mid-century, leaving about one gigaton of other greenhouse gases to be decarbonized by 2070 to meet India’s net-zero goal. The policy mix realizes this goal while maintaining the government’s fiscal stability, and increasing employment and GDP beyond business-as-usual. The trajectory reported here is one of many possible low-carbon development pathways that could potentially be a net socio-economic positive for India. However, barriers such as the country’s lack of clean energy innovation and industrial policies, the gap between its domestic manufacturing capacity and deployment requirements, individual sector readiness for decarbonization, and the distributional implications of government revenue shifts through the energy transition remain significant challenges that need to be addressed to realize these potential socio-economic benefits of decarbonization.

Industrial reform policies: does marketization enhance productivity more than privatization?

Abstract Placing state-owned firms into the private sector is understood to yield productivity gains, but this effect is seldom decomposed into changes in ownership (privatization) and changes in firm characteristics to match privately owned firms without changing ownership (marketization). This article presents an empirical assessment of Chinese firm-level data using a counterfactual design approach to identify if the Chinese ‘grasp the large and let go of the small’ industrial policy reform initiative reduced the efficiency gap between state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises and whether any gains were associated with privatization or marketization. Our empirical results show that marketization was associated with stronger increases in productivity than was privatization, suggesting that industrial reforms should consolidate assets, enhance cash flows, and reduce the need for external liquidity rather than focusing on changing ownership.

Evaluating Alternative Transformation Pathways of Wood-Based Bioeconomy: Application of an Input–Output Model

The wood-based bioeconomy is one of the main pillars of sustainable transformation and decarbonisation of the economy, as it promotes the use of renewable resources, reduces reliance on fossil fuels, and supports the development of eco-friendly industries. The paper provides quantitative insight into the potential impacts of transformation of the wood-based bioeconomy in Slovenia, a small, export-oriented economy with ample, but sub-optimally used, forest resources. The analysis uses an input–output (I-O) model to estimate I-O multipliers of sectors representing the wood-based bioeconomy and to capture their direct and indirect impacts on the Slovenian economy. The baseline performance of the wood bioeconomy sectors and their potential to induce economic activity (Scenario A) are estimated with an adjusted I-O model (based on the national I-O table for 2015), in which hybrid sectors are divided into conventional and bio-based segments. Alternative transformation pathways are translated into four additional scenarios. While Scenario B foresees progress in efficiency and integration within the existing structure of transactions, Scenario C (increased energy use of wood biomass) and Scenarios D/D+ (technology- and capital-intensive restructuring) represent two extreme restructuring pathways of the sector. The results of scenario analysis with the I-O model show that the changes in the input requirement structure of the Slovenian wood-based bioeconomy could result in up to a 17% increase in total output, up to a 20% increase in the number of employees, and up to a 16% increase in incomes, all of them attributed to the most optimistic scenario (D+). The results of the study provide quantified assessments underpinning strategic planning for the wood-based bioeconomy, both in the industry and public policy spheres.