Industrial Policy in China
This project is a collaboration with David Strömberg, Ruixue Jia and Yang yang. We want to create a database on CN industrial policies and explore its making as well its consequences:
- to build a database of industrial policies in China, from central government to local government at the city level
- define what is industrial policy
- find and validate documents on industrial policy
- characterize industrial policy
- to explore the making and efficacy of industrial policy
- is the making of industrial policy economic or political?
- does the implementation of industrial policy matter for innovation?
However, there are two primary methodological challenges in terms of data retrieval as well as mapping the policy into outcomes:
- what is an industry policy?
- an official definition does not exist
- any ad-hoc definition is prone to type I error (mistaking a non-policy as a policy) and type II error (mistaking a policy as a non-policy)
- how to link an industry policy with industries/firms that are affected
- lack of 1-1 mapping due to difference in industry classification between targeted industries and outcome data in patent and firm outcomes
- prominent in firm’s registration data as firm’s business scope are self-reported text descriptions
We started with developing a novel method to identify and characterize industries policies and characterize using natural langague processing meothods. Currently we are working on the subset of strategic emgerging industry (SEI) policies, the most imporant category of industry policies in China to promote innovation.