IKD seminar series: When is Industry Sustainable? New Perspectives on Sustainable Industrial Policies and Development

Industrial policy is in the news again across the world especially in the context of environmental concerns and the sustainability of such efforts by the state and other actors. What would such an industrial policy look like? How should different country experiences be accommodated? Do the old forms of manufacturing-led industrial policy continue to dominate? Are we in a multilateral era of industrial policy design and pressures of sustainability that requires new institutional or evolutionary perspectives? 

In spring 2023, the Review of Evolutionary Political Economy published a special issue on “Industrial Policy for Sustainable Development” edited by Ioanna Kastelli, Lukasz Mamica and Keun Lee. https://link.springer.com/journal/43253/volumes-and-issues/4-1.  

This IKD panel organized by Prof. Smita Srinivas builds on the Editors’ efforts in the last 2 years to pull together a diverse team of evolutionary, institutional scholars interested in industrial policy. It also draws upon Smita’s pandemic-era advisory perspectives on the struggle for relevant ‘sustainability’ frameworks to steer industrial policy to essentials such as in health, environment and energy, and food. The special edition included 7 papers including -Ioanna Kastelli, Lukasz Mamica, Lukasz Mamica, (2023) “New Perspectives and Issues in Industrial Policy for Sustainable Development: From Developmental and Entrepreneurial to Environmental State” and -Smita Srinivas (2023) "When is Industry ‘Sustainable’? The Economics of Institutional Variety in a Pandemic". Many of the papers in the special issue drew on policy-active industry or technology cases from diverse continents, and addressed the economic constraints during and after the pandemic. 

This panel includes short presentations to set up the changing contours of industrial policy debates, the context for when such policies can be successful, as well as the churn in economics of the underlying rationale and theoretical gaps of sustainable industrial policies. 

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Keun Lee is distinguished Professor of Seoul National University (economics), a Fellow of the CIFAR (Canada), and the chairman of the Center for Economic Catch-up. He is also an editor of Research Policy, and associate editor of Industrial and Corporate China. He is the winner of the 2014 Schumpeter Prize for his monograph on Schumpeterian Analysis of Economic Catch-up (2013 Cambridge Univ. Press), and also the 2019 Kapp Prize by EAEPE. He is also awarded the title of EBES Fellow of the Year 2023 by the EBES. He writes regularly for Project Syndicate. Previously, He served as the Vice-chairman of the National Economic Advisory Council for the chair and President of Korea, as the President of the International Schumpeter Society (2016-18), a member of the Committee for Development Policy of UN (2013-18), a GFC member of the World Economic Forum (2016-19). He obtained his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.  

Prof. Dr Habil. Łukasz Mamica, is Head of the Department of Public Economics at Krakow University of Economics. Co-ordinator of the research area Industrial Policy and Development in the international association of economists European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE). He is editor of the Journal of Public Governance  in the field of economics. Since 2005, he has been editor-in-chief of the Innovative Start journal. He conducts research on energy policy and economic competitiveness. His research includes economic analysis of the efficiency of the use of different types of energy sources, especially renewable energy. He coordinates research work on the determinants of energy poverty. Co-author of the regional innovation strategy for the Małopolska Voivodeship and he is long-standing expert working with public administration at all levels in Poland and the OECD. He is head of the energy policy research group conducting research on policy options for energy conservation, especially through the use of nudges. He is also an initiator and coordinator for the course Energy Economy and Sustainable Transformation at the Krakow University of Economics.  

Dr Ioanna Kastelli is Senior Tenured Researcher at National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Laboratory of Industrial and Energy Economics and in October 2023 was appointed Assistant Professot at the University of Thessaly. She holds a PhD in Economics of Technology and Technology Policy. Her​ research interests, professional skills and publications relate to the areas of Industrial and Technology Economics, Entrepreneurship, Industrial Policy, and the impact of technical change at the firm and productive systems level. She has participated in many European and national research projects in the above areas. Her research has been published in peer reviewed journals, book chapters and conferences. She is a co-author of the book: " Competitiveness and Technology in Greece ". Her published work has more than 1850 citations. She is coordinator of the Research Area Industrial Policy and Development at the European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy and associate editor of the Review of Evolutionary Political Economy of Springer. She was coordinating the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit of the NTUA (2011-2019) and from 2020 she is scientific associate at the Technology Transfer Office of NTUA. 

Chair: Dinar Kale (Professor of Innovation & Development at The Open University)