Industrial Policy & Competition
How governments try to shape what an economy produces — and how they regulate the firms that result. The revival of industrial policy, the toolkit, the developmental-state record, special economic zones, competition policy, the regulation of network industries, and state-owned enterprises.
8
Modules
~6h 30m
Reading time
Advanced
Level
Self-paced
Format
Syllabus
- 01→
The return of industrial policy
The market failures it targets — coordination, externalities, capital-market gaps — and the Mazzucato-Rodrik revival of the case.
~50 minModule 01 - 02→
The toolkit
Subsidies, special economic zones, local-content rules, development banks, and directed credit — the instruments and their failure modes.
~50 minModule 02 - 03→
The East Asian developmental state
Korea and Taiwan, the disciplining of rents, and conditional support tied to export performance.
~50 minModule 03 - 04→
Picking winners vs enabling sectors
Horizontal vs vertical policy, the information problem, and Evans's 'embedded autonomy' that lets a state steer without capture.
~50 minModule 04 - 05→
Special economic zones
What works — Mauritius, Ethiopia's industrial parks — and the empty-zone problem when the fundamentals aren't there.
~45 minModule 05 - 06→
Competition policy
Why markets concentrate, abuse of dominance, merger control, and the African Competition Forum's enforcement reality.
~50 minModule 06 - 07→
Regulating network industries
Natural monopoly, price-cap vs rate-of-return regulation, and the independence problem every utility regulator faces.
~50 minModule 07 - 08→
State-owned enterprises
The SOE footprint, the soft-budget-constraint problem, and the reform and privatisation record — what worked and what didn't.
~45 minModule 08
How to use this course
Start with module 01 if the material is new; skip ahead if you have prior exposure. Each module is self-contained but the arc is sequential — the projects in the final module assume the toolkit from modules 1-11. Every module ends with key takeaways and a curated further-reading list with primary sources.