American Influence on Industrial Policy in Western Europe since the Second World War

Despite the recent use of this term by economists, perhaps as an analogy with agriculture, there are many ways of defining industrial policy. ‘Industrial policy’ may in one sense be regarded as the combined effect on industry of a variety of macro- and micro-economic policies, including monetary, budgetary and fiscal policies, anti-trust policy, policy for government purchases and policy for wages and prices, etc. It is in this way that the United States, for example, has tackled its industrial control.1