Nathan Lane, PhD

Economics professor, University of Oxford

I’m an empirical economist working at the intersection of big data, economic development, political economy, and industrial economics. Find my research here.

My work has appeared in The New York Times, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Noahpinion, Trade Talks, and more.

See my work with The Industrial Policy Group, an empirical research lab. I’m an affiliate of CESifo research network and a cofounder of Sodalabs.io.

Recent Research

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Manufacturing Revolutions: Industrial Policy and Industrialization in South Korea

I study the impact of industrial policy on industrial development by considering an important episode during the East Asian miracle: South Korea's heavy and chemical industry (HCI) drive, 1973--1979. Based on newly assembled data, I use the introduction and termination of industrial policies to study their impacts during and after the intervention period.

Measuring Industrial Policy: A Text-Based Approach

We provide a new, text-based approach to measuring industrial policy at scale and deliver a global data set on industrial policy practice.

Industrial Policy and the Global Semiconductor Sector

This paper documents and quantifies the magnitude of industrial policies in the global semiconductor sector since the passage of the CHIPS Act in the United States. We provide a comprehensive examination of semiconductor industrial policies globally, their rationale, and their potential economic impacts including cross-border effects.

Recent Writing

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New measures reveal a growing industrial policy divide

New measures reveal that advanced economies are leading a global surge in industrial policy—developing countries must navigate the consequences. By Reka Juhasz, Nathan Lane, Emily Oehslen, and Veronica Perez on VoxDev.

Not a ‘side dish’: New industrial policy and competition

Industrial policy is undergoing a major resurgence. Spurred by multiple overlapping crises, economists have been seeking to draw lessons from the past, while policymakers have had to take urgent action. This column describes how the paradigm shift in ‘industrial strategy’ in the US has been...

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