This book is intended as a brief, but hopefully interesting and informative, guide to industrial policy for students, academics and policymakers. As such, it covers the main economic theories relevant to the topic, but also shows how policies have been, and can be, applied in concrete settings to tackle a host of familiar economic challenges as well as emerging ones like decarbonization.

Although at times controversial, almost every economically successful country became so through deploying industrial policies at some point or other, whether their governments admit to doing so or not. Examining how such interventions are done, in particular policy domains, and by different countries at different times, is therefore an important and useful exercise.

Being a short book that tries to cover a lot, there are necessarily some gaps in coverage. I have mainly focused on the policies and strategies of relatively advanced countries in Europe, North America and East Asia, as these have mostly gone through the early stages of industrialization and now face common problems of adjusting to an increasingly technologically sophisticated future. This unfortunately means glossing over the challenges of how low-income countries can achieve initial industrial take-off.

I would like to thank my publisher at Agenda, Alison Howson, and several reviewers, especially Bob Hancké, who provided valuable feedback at various stages, although any errors are mine alone. David Britto provided valuable help with some of the data and charts. The book itself is fondly dedicated to Sunita and Lucas.