Reich: I think its a very opportune time to sell the notion that if we already have an elaborate industrial policy and that our political economy is already going to generate an elaborate industrial policy, then we must search for ways of creating greater coherence and making it more consistent with our macro objectives.

Summers: Well my argument at this time would be to tie any kind or level of industry discussions-coalitions to much more active discussions at the industry level, which are currently perceived to be blocked by anti-trust laws. When I say anti-trust exemption, I don't mean a license to steal. I mean that we ought to devise ways of letting companies talk to each other about how to restructure an industry which leaves them exempt during that time from prosecutions.

Crimson: Do you advocate a kind of corporate monetarism, such as President Hoover advocated?

Summers: Hoover's experiment ran right into the depression, so its not clear.

Bower: Let me interject a major qualification about whether people outside the industry shouldn't think about the question of what the industrial structure in the United States should be. All the mistakes come from people outside the activity trying to make a judgement about what we need. But I think this destruction in anti-trust would almost certainly be a good idea. I think we ought to look hard at our anti-trust policies to see if we can make them better.

Reich: There is not a perfect match between private sector decision making, what's good for the shareholders, and what is good for the country. If you acknowledge that there is an imperfect match, then you're back at the first questions we raised: can you fix it, and should you try, and what are the negative side effects of trying?

Bower: I have colleagues who argue that what we need is not an industrial policy, but we need an industrial strategy. And by that I mean that there ought to be an effort in the central government to diagnose what's going on in the economy in macro and sectoral terms, so that one could at least understand what would be attractive if it happened. Giving some sense to the extent to which pieces are interrelated, how they affect a particular part, and what might be attractive. There is an argument that when you do that, the argument for indicative planning, that people do pay attention to those kinds of frameworks and follow them without the kind of apparatus that I deeply object to.

Crimson: Industrial policy is a key issue for the Democratic candidates. Is the lifetime for industrial policy only as long as the 1984 Presidential campaign? And do you feel that because the issue has been politicized, have the ideals of industrial policy been compromised?

Reich: The political meaning of industrial policy will wax and wane. I don't have great hopes that the debate will be enhanced in the next year. My expectation is quite the contrary, that the public debate of industrial policy probably will resort to more caricature and people will see it as the age-old debate between free market and central planning. That will be fairly short-lived. After the election, regardless of who wins. I hope that that element of industrial policy will become quiet for a while, and the more interesting portion of the debate will continue.

Bower: We have a problem we can't walk away from. We have to do something about it and we will do something about it. If we don't, we'll have more ad hoc interventions. I think it extremely valuable that the debate continue, and that it be as informed as possible.

Summers: I think there will be some waning of the debate. The novelty of industrial policy, as a strategy, has led some people, particularly those who aren't experts, into a vastly inflated sense of what it can hope to accomplish.