Strategie di politica industriale e settori strategici. Un’analisi applicata al caso degli Stati Uniti.

In the last few years, with the onset of the global economic crisis, industrial policy has appeared in the political and academic debate with a renewed vigour. In this contest industrial policy seems to be thought of as a long run strategy oriented to achieving important societal goals. In some ways this can be considered as a new approach to industrial policy, since several governments, including the United States, have re-considered their role in contemporary productive dynamics in favour of a more coherent and structured policy intervention, compared to the past. Jointly to horizontal policies, coherent with a market-oriented development, industrial policy has had a vertical impact, promoting specific economic sectors considered as strategic for the future well-being of the society. This paper describes firstly the strategic industrial policy approach and the related concept of strategic sector. In the second part, it is proposed an empirical method to identify strategic sectors as an attempt to mitigate the government failures and make the industrial policy intervention more rigorous. Finally, the method of analysis will be applied to the United States case, looking for the industries that can be considered as strategic for the American economy.