New Thinking in Industrial Policy: Perspectives from Developed and Developing Countries

The conference will take place on November 6, 2026.

Industrial policy is back on mainstream policy agendas in the U.S., Europe, and many developing countries, but the knowledge base to guide industrial policy remains underdeveloped. This conference on “New Thinking in Industrial Policy: Perspectives from Developed and Developing Countries” will convene leading researchers from economics, sociology, political science, and related fields to take stock of what is known and what needs to be learned about the optimal design of industrial policy, the challenges in evaluating interventions empirically, and the difficulties that practitioners face on the ground. The conference will be hosted by the Firms & Industrial Policy Idea Lab of the Center for Political Economy (CPE), the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), and the Center for Development Economics and Policy (CDEP).  It builds on the successful 1st, 2nd, and 3rd meetings in the series. 

The submission deadline is Monday Sept 14th, 2026 at 11:59pm ET. Papers should be submitted at this link (gmail sign-in required). We expect to post the program by Monday Oct. 5, 2026.

The program includes keynote conversations between Jake Sullivan (Harvard Kennedy School) and Joe Stiglitz (Columbia University), and between Julie Su (NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice) and Susan Helper (Case Western Reserve University). The remainder of the program will feature presentations of papers selected competitively from the call. 

The academic committee for the event is: Laura Boudreau (Columbia University), Bilge Erten (Northeastern University), Martin Guzman (Columbia University), Susan Helper (Case Western Reserve University), Luis Jaramillo (Columbia University), Nils Kupzok (Columbia University), Nathan Lane (London School of Economics), Andrew Schrank (Brown University), Matthias Thiemann (Sciences Po), Eric Verhoogen (Columbia University), and Josh Whitford (Columbia University).

The conference will cover two nights' hotel accommodation and reasonable travel costs (economy class for flights) for speakers.

If you have questions, please contact Olena Jennings of CDEP at [email protected]. 

Further information will be posted here as it becomes available.