News Categories: Industrial Strategy

Prime Minister Theresa May spoke at the CBI annual conference to set out her vision for UK business including a modern Industrial Strategy.

At the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Prime Minister Theresa May laid out her plan for how Britain can lead in the transformed modern world.

The government has pledged that it will develop an industrial strategy. Now it is trying to decide exactly what that means and how best to do it. Crafting an industrial strategy is tricky at the best of times, but in the UK the process is complicated by history. Whatever strategy is chosen needs not only […]

Business support policies designed to raise employment and productivity are ubiquitous around the world. We exploit changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support jobs through investment subsidies. Pan-European state aid rules determine whether a sub-national geographical area is eligible for subsidies, and we construct instrumental variables for area (and plant) […]

After the political earthquakes of June and July, August has given Whitehall’s politicians and civil servants some breathing space to work out what their to-do list will be over the next year. Leaving the EU aside, for the revamped Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy there’s a huge, and potentially very significant task of […]

Industrial policies have played an important role in successful development. Through these policies, governments intervene in the market’s sectoral allocation of resources and choice of technologies. Earlier industrial policies had a narrow remit and made use of a limited number of instruments. This paper argues that they should pursue broader objectives with a wider range […]

Virtually as she stepped into Number 10, Prime Minister Theresa May indicated a new attitude of the UK’s Conservative government towards manufacturing and industrial policy. It was a welcome shift from a party who have consistently undermined British manufacturing communities like my own in the last 40 years. Now there is an opportunity to put […]

So yet again a UK parliamentary select committee is asking “do we need an industrial strategy?”. They have asked this many times before and the answer has tended to be ‘yes’. Reflecting the research and views of Harvard economics professor and expert on international development Dani Rodrik – the real question about industrial policy is […]

The argument should be about the best way the state can help drive growth, writes Mariana Mazzucato

Theresa May is drawing up plans to develop an industrial strategy for the UK and to change an “anything goes” business culture. Good. There is a lot that needs fixing. The prime minister is not the first leader to make such promises. Here are the do’s and don’ts her government should consider, based on experience […]

Greg Clark, Business and Energy Secretary speaking at the 2016 Conservative Party Conference at The ICC, Birmingham.

Green growth requires green technologies: production techniques that economize on exhaustible resources and emit fewer greenhouse gases. The availability of green technologies both lowers social costs in the transition to a green growth path and helps achieve a satisfactory rate of material progress under that path. The theoretical case in favour of using industrial policy […]

As the UK prepares to leave the European Union, the TUC argues in their action plan that the first priority is to protect jobs and defend the living standards of working people. TUC proposes specific actions which can be taken immediately or in the coming weeks, with regard to: • protecting jobs, apprenticeships and livelihoods […]

Those in the Westminster commentariat who continue to cast doubt on the Prime Minister’s commitment to the idea of a Northern Powerhouse need to look a little more carefully at the evidence before indulging us with their wishful thinking. Both at Prime Minister’s Questions and in her Yorkshire Post letter Theresa May has explicitly affirmed […]

Encouraging economic growth “up and down the country” has been put front and centre of Theresa May’s ambitions for her premiership, to be achieved by a renewed emphasis on industrial policy. This paper provides an in-depth picture of the geographical and industrial make-up of the national economy, and argues that supporting growth in urban areas will be pivotal to achieving Theresa […]

Industrial policy rarely features in analysis of post-crisis economic policy change in Britain, despite manufacturing featuring centrally in the ‘rebalancing’ narrative espoused by elites since 2008. The article seeks to interrogate the character of recent governments’ approaches to industrial policy and manufacturing industries. It does so through the prism of Peter Hall’s ‘three orders of […]

Theresa May has expressed her support for a modern industrial strategy. As she created her first Cabinet, Mrs May pushed this agenda further forward by recasting the former BIS as a new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The TUC has long championed the case for such an industrial strategy and this development is […]

This conference provides an intellectual and policy-relevant platform for scholars around the world to address the new and emerging challenges facing cities and regions. The global economic slowdown poses major concerns to many territories – through shortfalls in employment, household incomes, corporate profitability and tax revenues. The steel industry has been one of the hardest […]

Speech from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking at Conservative Party Conference at The ICC, Birmingham on 3rd October 2016

In the wake of the vote to leave the European Union it seems likely that the UK will adopt a new immigration regime, moving away from the current free movement of people within the EU and possibly extending the current points-based-system that applies to those outside the European Union. Given the government’s promise to bring […]

Nissan’s announcement and questions about a deal show why the government must quickly set out a clear industrial strategy plan.  

Whether a ‘Brexit’ would threaten the United Kingdom’s national security has become a central theme in the run-up to the in/out referendum on EU membership. Although national security has been a central facet of both the ‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’ campaigns thus far, there has been little mention of the implications of a Brexit for UK […]