Coordination of Industrial Policy in the European Union

Accessible en ligne : http://www.eib.org/attachments/efs/eibpapers/y06n2v11/06_Allen_Herbert_Koopman.pdfSpillovers from national industrial policies can cause helpful or harmful competition among policy makers and helpful or harmful interactions among the targeted industries. As a result, it is not in general possible to say whether industrial policy coordination is good or bad. However, reaching agreement at the EU level on any type of policy – trade policy, monetary policy or industrial policy – is costly in terms of time, information, and political goodwill. The contrast between the vagueness of the benefits of coordination and the surety of the decision-making costs suggests that the EU has no need to set up a new institutional structure for coordinating industrial policy. In the few cases where the merits of coordination are obvious, such as public spending on R&D, they will be obvious to all and ad hoc cooperation will work