Challenges of Industrial Policy to Enhance Competitiveness

Abctract. This study explores how the traditional approaches of perceiving competitiveness and industrial policy could be enriched through a synthetic and evolutionary perspective. Competitiveness, in particular, tends to be studied in the literature in a relatively fragmented way, focusing either on the level of individual nations, or on the sectors of economic activity, or on the firm level. As a result, the evolutionary structures that define competitiveness in a unified socioeconomic way are usually bypassed. In this context, the traditional approach to industrial policy-making, which has as sole objective the strengthening of specific sectors, is inadequate to enhance the multilevel socioeconomic competitiveness in our days. Therefore, we suggest a comprehensive re-positioning of the concept of "organic competitiveness" in overall and synthetic socioeconomic terms (firms-sectors-socioeconomic systems) as useful for a redirected modern industrial policy. Keywords. Competitiveness, Industrial policy, Evolutionary link between competitiveness and industrial policy, Globalization. JEL. L52, B52, F63.