Finance and Industrial Policy ─ Beyond Financial Regulation in Europe

The 2008 global financial crisis, together with the experience of de-industrialization across Western Europe over the last three decades, has focussed attention on financial regulation and industrial policy.

Industry and finance policies have largely been discussed separately, and this book argues that the two should be considered together, in both analysis and policy formulation that deals with critical questions of how finance has intervened in industrial restructuring and how it might better serve the real economy. Moreover, policy debates have paid relatively little attention to the heterogeneous economic structures and growth trajectories of European economies, and the interconnectedness and interdependencies of growth paths that present specific challenges to policy and highlight the need for cooperation across the region.

This book brings together leading scholars and policy makers to contribute to policy debates in three ways. First, it includes current discussions of banking policy, regulation, and reform to reassert the need for financial institutions that will back up and finance an industrial policy to revive the European economy. Second, it reviews the role of industrial and investment policy in supporting innovation, creating jobs, and generating sustainable economic growth. Third, it advances alternative policy proposals aimed at generating sustainable economic growth and employment in Europe. Part I analyses the nature of growth, industrial, and economic restructuring in relation to finance in the lead up to the crisis, at regional, national, and sector levels. Part II presents alternative and progressive policy proposals for growth and employment in Europe in light of the analysis presented in Part I.

Giovanni Cozzi, Senior Lecturer, University of Greenwich,Susan Newman, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of the West of England,Jan Toporowski,Professor of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Giovanni Cozzi is Senior Economist at the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), Brussels. Previously he was Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Policy and Research (CDPR) at the School of Oriental and African Studies where he collaborated on a 3 years European Commission FP7 funded project assessing the Challenges for Europe in the World of 2030 (AUGUR).


Susan Newman is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of England. Prior to this, she held academic positions at the International Institute of Social Studies (Netherlands) and the University of the Witwatersrand. Her published academic work has been in the areas of industrial policy, the political economy of post-Apartheid South Africa, and global value chains/global commodity chains.


Jan Toporowski is Professor of Economics and Finance in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Visiting Professor of Economics and Finance in the International University College of Turin, and Visiting Professor of Economics in the University of Bergamo.