S4 Ep4: Navigating industrial policy

Recorded at the 2025 annual conference of the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth Programme, held at the University of Oxford.

For years, economists hardly dared speak in public about industrial policy, for fear of being laughed out of the room. Now, thanks partly to deglobalisation and trade wars, it’s back on the agenda.

Beata Javorcik of the University of Oxford is the chief economist at the EBRD. She speaks to Tim Phillips about What the return of industrial policy implies for the process of development and, if more countries are going to embrace industrial policy, how they can avoid the mistakes of the past.