The paper will review the impact of industrial policy on growth in developing countries from the 1960s until
the present. This is a propitious time to conduct such an assessment. Within policy-making and academic
circles, extremely critical views of state intervention in general, and industrial policy in particular, are no longer as dominant, and have given way to more nuanced approaches. This opening allows for a reassessment of
earlier policies from today’s vantage point, as well as reflection about new challenges posed by global production and constrained policy options.
The paper will make an explicit comparison between the strategies of East Asia and Latin America.
These are the most industrialized regions within the developing world, accounting for 80 per cent of manufacturing value added (Lall, Albaladejo and Moreira, 2004: 9). East Asia’s income and manufacturing growth
rates have surpassed those of Latin America, and much of the literature on industrial policy engages in
explicit comparison between the regions and offers explanations for their diverging performance.