From Social Assistance to Social Development: Targeted Education Subsidies

Industrialization was never an accident but an outcome of a well- crafted industrial policy. Analyzing the capacity and limits of the (developmental) state in the industrialization process and in economic development in general, Murat Yülek’s new book, How Nations Succeed: Manufacturing, Trade, Industrial Policy, and Economic Development, sheds light on how today’s governments can design industrial policy and how they can identify strategic sectors to break out of Low and Middle Income Traps. Explaining technical concepts in understandable terms, the book introduces a stylized industrialization process in four stages and locates different countries on the process map. He illustrates how picking-the-winner type industrial policies –a controversial issue among the economists –have worked in different countries. It also discusses how industrial policy and science, technology and innovation policies should be sequenced for best results. As trade wars and (pre-mature) de-industrialization become the zeitgeist of today, the book shows the links between global (im)balances and economic development explaining export-led growth as well as import-led slowdowns.