Evaluation of industrial policy: methodological issues and policy lessons

Industrial policy, covers a multitude of policy instruments and approaches. While there has been a recent revival of interest in industrial policy around the world, systematic evidence of efficacy is relatively scarce.

This new OECD report (Evaluation of industrial policy (2014)) brings together the work of an OECD expert group that has considered recent evidence from the evaluation of industrial policy.

The report focuses on three specific policy areas, namely:

• support for R&D;
• capital market interventions (with a focus on risk capital);
• public procurement for innovation.

It also examines three areas where packages of industrial policy measures are generally applied:

• sector approaches including public-private partnerships PPP);
• policies towards clusters and business networks;
• national industrial strategies.

In many areas of industrial policy, evaluation faces particular methodological challenges. These challenges are outlined in the report, which concludes by drawing together the main policy lessons from the available evaluation evidence.

In particular the recomendations to the policy makers are:

• Make an explicit commitment to the evaluation of industrial policy
• Insist on the development of data and evaluation strategies before programmes can begin.
• Choose evaluation techniques appropriate to the programmes concerned.
• Evaluate industrial strategy using mixed methods.
• Insist on full disclosure in evaluation reports.
• Create robust governance mechanisms to ensure evaluation is objective and free of political influence.
• Develop effective mechanisms for policy learning

RELATED POST

photo: (*) Photosolde
________________________________________________________________________