Are there any well-regarded economists who think the infant industry argument is a good argument?
Mankiw mentions it briefly in The Principles of Economics[1], which if I recall correctly is the most widely-used economics textbook, saying "Economists are often skeptical about such claims, largely because the infant-industry argument is difficult to implement in practice...many economists are skeptical about the infant-industry argument in principle...Protection is not necessary for an infant industry to grow."
Paul Krugman spends a few pages on it in International Economics: Theory and Policy[2], saying "The infant industry argument seems highly plausible, and in fact it has been persuasive to many governments. Yet economists have pointed out many pitfalls in the argument, suggesting that it must be used cautiously.
First, it is not always good to try to move today into the industries that will have a comparative advantage in the future...Second, protecting manufacturing does no good unless the protection itself helps make industry competitive
...
More generally, the fact that it is costly and time-consuming to build up an industry is not an argument for government intervention unless there is some domestic market failure. If an industry is supposed to be able to earn high enough returns for capital, labor, and other factors of production to be worth developing, then why don't private investors develop the industry without government help?
...
In practice it is difficult to evaluate which industries really warrant special treatment, and there are risks that a policy intended to promote development will end up being captured by special interests."
Mankiw mentions it briefly in The Principles of Economics[1], which if I recall correctly is the most widely-used economics textbook, saying "Economists are often skeptical about such claims, largely because the infant-industry argument is difficult to implement in practice...many economists are skeptical about the infant-industry argument in principle...Protection is not necessary for an infant industry to grow."
Paul Krugman spends a few pages on it in International Economics: Theory and Policy[2], saying "The infant industry argument seems highly plausible, and in fact it has been persuasive to many governments. Yet economists have pointed out many pitfalls in the argument, suggesting that it must be used cautiously.
First, it is not always good to try to move today into the industries that will have a comparative advantage in the future...Second, protecting manufacturing does no good unless the protection itself helps make industry competitive
...
More generally, the fact that it is costly and time-consuming to build up an industry is not an argument for government intervention unless there is some domestic market failure. If an industry is supposed to be able to earn high enough returns for capital, labor, and other factors of production to be worth developing, then why don't private investors develop the industry without government help?
...
In practice it is difficult to evaluate which industries really warrant special treatment, and there are risks that a policy intended to promote development will end up being captured by special interests."
[1] Mankiw's textbook: http://books.google.com/books?id=oRgQ2goeFzwC&pg=PT222&#...
[2] http://books.google.com/books?id=L5DaCeXtNq0C&pg=PA257&#...