00:00
尊敬的用户您好，这是来自FT中文网的温馨提示：如您对更多FT中文网的内容感兴趣，请在苹果应用商店或谷歌应用市场搜索“FT中文网”，下载FT中文网的官方应用。
{"text":[[{"start":7.35,"text":"This article is an on-site version of the Free Lunch newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every Thursday and Sunday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters."}],[{"start":21.299999999999997,"text":"Over the past decade, governments in the rich world have deployed a range of strategies to boost domestic output, including sector-specific industrial plans, large public investment packages and now, amid rising competition from China, protectionism."}],[{"start":37.199999999999996,"text":"But as they shift towards increasingly interventionist tactics, western policymakers risk neglecting one of the simplest drivers of growth: enabling the private sector. If capital, energy, land and labour were faster, cheaper and easier for businesses to deploy, productive investment would follow."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":55.949999999999996,"text":"Analysis published last week by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates the levelised cost of greenfield projects in different industries across countries. This is the unit price at which investments become viable, and accounts for time taken to generate returns as well as direct expenses."}],[{"start":72.69999999999999,"text":"It finds that, even before considering the effects of taxes and subsidies, European and US industrial set-up costs are 50 to 300 per cent higher in many sectors relative to the most competitive nations."}],[{"start":86.6,"text":"For measure, the cost of developing a new electric vehicle platform in Germany is more than 3.5 times as much as in China. And the cost of setting up a new nuclear fission reactor in France is about three times more than in South Korea. In industries where inputs are more tradeable, cost differentials are less significant but still hinder competitiveness. For instance, producing advanced semiconductor chips in the US costs almost 40 per cent more than in Taiwan."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":113.14999999999999,"text":"The gaps are driven by differences in the costs and delays businesses face across a project’s timeline, from building a plant to producing and selling products."}],[{"start":122.8,"text":"Looking at the average differential between the cheapest and most expensive location across all industries, more than one-third is explained by construction and equipment costs. This includes drivers such as the length of time to obtain permits and speed of construction. For example, it takes on average around three months more to obtain building permissions in France compared with Singapore, according to the World Bank’s enterprise surveys. "}],[{"start":149.95,"text":"Thirty per cent comes from energy and other feedstock expenditure. Indeed, electricity prices explain two-thirds of the cost gap between a data centre built in China compared with the UK. Labour costs account for another 25 per cent. In semiconductor fabrication plants, for instance, Taiwanese engineers generate one quarter more output per worker, despite wages that are roughly 2.5 times lower than those of their US counterparts."}],[{"start":176.5,"text":"The remaining gap of about 10 per cent comes mainly from differences in the time taken to get products to market. This factor is most significant in biotech, where Chinese companies can, for example, launch drugs roughly two years earlier than firms in Europe and the US, thereby extending the commercial length of a patent’s lifespan. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":195.85,"text":"For policymakers wanting to raise productivity, a good starting point should then be to unlock the supply of essential factors of production. "}],[{"start":203.7,"text":"Looser planning and building rules would crunch construction timelines. This would also support the development of energy plants, grid connections and storage, making power costs less of an investment hurdle. Germany proved what is possible when urgent measures to enable faster permits and modular construction helped it open new liquefied natural gas import terminals just 200 days after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. "}],[{"start":229.54999999999998,"text":"Labour cost differentials can be squeezed by investing in education and training and easing non-wage and restructuring costs. Promising reforms in Germany last week tightened sick leave rules and relaxed hiring and firing regulation. (German employees on average take 20 days of sick leave per year.) "}],[{"start":248.54999999999998,"text":"Broader tax reforms that encourage business, work and expenditure on plant, machinery and productivity-enhancing technology would help, too."}],[{"start":257.65,"text":"One McKinsey scenario finds that a raft of competitiveness measures could close the cost gap relative to the cheapest locations by up to 70 per cent in the US and 60 per cent in Europe."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":269.7,"text":"Although efforts to lower the costs and barriers to deploying capital, labour, energy and land will struggle to eliminate the entire gap, prioritising this economy-wide approach to driving growth has several upsides."}],[{"start":283.45,"text":"First, narrowing cost differentials allows competitive strengths beyond levelised costs — such as brand, product differentiation, skilled workers, industrial clusters and geography — to play a bigger role in attracting investment. "}],[{"start":298.45,"text":"Second, unlike policies targeted at specific sectors, lowering the cost of cross-cutting inputs strengthens entire supply chains and helps industry adapt faster as new technologies and competitive pressures emerge. Focusing government on enabling investment rather than directing it reduces opportunities for lobbying and bureaucratic expansion too."}],[{"start":320.05,"text":"Nonetheless, if policymakers wish to pursue protectionism — to reduce industrial dependencies or address unfair trading practices — closing part of the cost gap through reforms still decreases the scale of the tariffs or subsidies required. This, in turn, lowers the fiscal cost and market distortion of such measures."}],[{"start":339,"text":"Agile economies are competitive ones. As governments embrace more activist industrial policy, they should remember that considerable growth can be unlocked just by unleashing the essential factors of production."}],[{"start":351.35,"text":"Send your thoughts in the comments, to [email protected] or via X @tejparikh90."}],[{"start":358.20000000000005,"text":"Food for thought"}],[{"start":359.70000000000005,"text":"As England faces Mexico in the Fifa World Cup at 2,240 metres above sea level in Mexico City, this 2007 study assesses the link between altitude and athletic performance."}],[{"start":372.80000000000007,"text":"Free Lunch on Sunday is edited by Harvey Nriapia"}],[{"start":null,"text":"