The American government now owns roughly ten percent of Intel. The Department of Defense is the largest shareholder of the company that runs the only rare-earth mine in the United States, and it has guaranteed that company a minimum price for its product for a decade. A "golden share" gives the White House veto rights inside U.S. Steel. The Department of Energy holds a loan portfolio that would make it one of the largest project-finance lenders on Earth. None of this was true ten years ago. Something fundamental has changed in the relationship between the American state and the American market — and it is being built, deal by deal, on legal foundations that are contested, improvised, and largely unexamined.
This seminar examines the return of industrial policy and the emergence of new forms of state capitalism in advanced economies, from the perspective of the legal institutions that shape them.
By the end of the semester you should be able to:
1. Explain the core economic justifications for — and critiques of — industrial policy (market failures, externalities, coordination problems, learning effects) in plain English, and deploy them in legal argument;
2. Map the American industrial policy toolkit — grants, loans, loan guarantees, tax credits, procurement, tariffs, equity stakes, price floors, offtake agreements — to the statutory authorities that enable each tool and the legal constraints that discipline them;
3. Read and critique the primary instruments of implementation: notices of funding opportunity, guardrail regulations, conditional commitments, term sheets, and oversight reports;
4. Compare the U.S. approach with the East Asian developmental-state tradition, the EU’s state-aid regime, and Chinese state capitalism, and explain what is genuinely novel about post-2021 American practice;
5. Execute the working steps of a federal investment process — intake, diligence, underwriting, negotiation, and committee decision — and document them professionally;
6. Use AI tools critically and effectively as a professional accelerant, with a clear-eyed understanding of their failure modes; and
7. Produce a substantial piece of original legal scholarship analyzing a specific industrial policy intervention.
This class does not have a textbook. Rather, we will focus on analyzing original research and primary materials. Readings for each class are listed and linked in the Day-to-Day Detail below.
Building an Analytical Framework
Thursday, 20 August 2026 | Oops
Monday, 24 August 2026 | Orientation to the Class
Wednesday, 26 August 2026 | What Is Industrial Policy?
Monday, 31 August 2026 | An Economics Toolkit for Lawyers, Part I
Wednesday, 2 September 2026 | An Economics Toolkit for Lawyers, Part II
[Additional details to come]
Testing the Framework in Comparative Perspective
[Details to come]
Deep Diving the U.S. Experience
[Details to come]
Simulating State Investment
[Details to come]
This part of the course website provides: (1) high-level summaries of the content covered in a given class period; (2) assigned readings; and (3) supplemental readings and materials.
In today's class we discuss the philosophy of the course, level-set on both student and instructor expectations, and discuss some fundamental questions of the course.
Assigned Readings (provided in class):
Réka Juhász & Nathan Lane, "A New Economics of Industrial Policy," IMF Finance & Development (June 2024)
Réka Juhász, Nathan Lane & Dani Rodrik, "The New Economics of Industrial Policy," 16 Ann. Rev. Econ. 213 (2024)
Dorothy Sayers, "Why Work?"
Assigned Readings:
Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, "Is Industrial Policy Making a Comeback?"
Dani Rodrik, "Industrial Policy for the 21st Century," HKS Working Paper No. RWP04-047 (2004)
[Reading assignments to come]
[Reading assignments to come]