Competitiveness and Industrial Policy: From Rationalities of Failure Towards the Ability to Evolve

Arbeitspapier

This paper elaborates a dynamic rationale of industrial policy, focusing on how to strengthen the socio-economic system's ability to evolve, i.e., how to achieve high real income together with qualitative change. It highlights that the ubiquitous rationalities of failure, be it of markets, governments, or systems, are rooted in a peculiar habit of accepting hypothetical perfect states as normative benchmarks. In contrast, a dynamic logic of intervention should start from the question, what the system aims to accomplish. Combining the structuralist ontology of micro, meso and macro with the functional principles of evolutionary change, the paper proposes a general typology of economic policies based on their respective contributions to the system's ability to evolve.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: WIFO Working Papers ; No. 505

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: Industrial policy ; competitiveness ; evolutionary economics ; structural change

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Peneder, Michael
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO)
• (where): Vienna
• (when): 2016

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/129054
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET