Annual Conference 2025

Organisers

Local Organisation: Felix Bierbrauer (University of Cologne)
Core Conference: Achim Wambach (ZEW)
Open Meeting: Philipp Schmidt-Dengler (University of Vienna)

Core Conference: Revival of Industrial Policy

Industrial policy is back in fashion after having been frowned upon for a long time. In their reports to the EU Parliament and the EU Commission, former Italian Prime Ministers Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi recommend a massive strengthening of industrial policy in Europe. The cornerstone of the new EU Commission's economic policy is the “Clean Industrial Deal”, which aims to combine the transformation of the economy with the “competitiveness” of industry. In Germany, the country with the highest industrial share of GDP in Europe, the extent and direction of industrial policy is also being debated.

The triggers for this revival are manifold. In addition to the weak productivity development in Europe, these include the transformation to climate neutrality as well as the new geopolitical tensions and the associated need for a more resilient economy in Europe.

In science, “industrial policy” is not a research field in its own right, but is dealt with from different areas. The keynote speeches at the annual conference will address aspects of current developments in research on industrial policy and outline where further research is needed.

Reka Juhasz (University of British Columbia) is co-founder of “The Industrial Policy Group”, which deals with empirical questions of industrial policy with the aim of deriving “basic insights into global industrial policy practice”. Pol Antras (Harvard University), a leading foreign trade expert, will address trade and security of supply in his talk. Another contribution will deal with the interplay between industrial and competition policy.

The core conference panel will focus on European industrial policy and its geopolitical environment. The USA with its Inflation Reduction Act and China use subsidies to promote the domestic economy. At the same time, international agreements set limits for industrial policy. The World Trade Organisation allows tariffs to offset foreign subsidies. The EU's state aid control largely prohibits state subsidies from EU countries, and the EU has just adopted a new regulation to be able to take action against foreign subsidies into the internal market. How should the EU position its industrial policy in this situation? What is planned and what works? The panel is made up of people from politics and science.