On the importance of openness for industrial policy design in developing countries

How should industrial policy be designed in developing countries? Should industrial policy be targeted to a few sectors or be more broad based and therefore more neutral? Our theoretical analysis demonstrates that access to foreign markets is key to answering this question. We show that in a less open economy, industrial policy should be targeted, while in a more open economy, broad based policies are likely to be more effective. One implication of this result is that deregulation is likely to be more successful in a relatively open economy than in a more closed economy. Indeed, deregulation with limited foreign market access may lead to deindustrialisation. We provide empirical results that support these predictions.