Picking winners?

"How do governments choose which industries to favor? If governments are largely motivated by the national economic interest, then industrial selection would be biased in favor of picking winners. If, on the other hand, governments are motivated by an electoral and political logic, as is usually assumed in mainstream political economy approaches, then industrial choices would be skewed in favor of politically influential industries - even if they are uncompetitive or declining." "At the core of this book is a methodology that pits these competing explanations against each other, draws out their testable propositions, and then uses three different approaches - econometrics, structured data analysis, and case studies - to ascertain whether one or the other explanation prevails in the celebrated case of postwar Japan." "Picking Winners? uses a range of methodologies from econometrics to case studies to interviews with over one hundred Japanese government officials. The author draws on both existing case studies and her own in-depth study of the industrial space-launch service industry, about which little is known in Japan or elsewhere."--BOOK JACKET.