Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation 241(January 2026) 2026

Bryan Cheang and Mark Pennington

Published 1 January 2026

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Proponents of “new industrial policy” claim that systemic directionality can be imparted to market economies in ways recognising the epistemic challenges of complexity and uncertainty. This paper evaluates these efforts to reformulate industrial policy on a more epistemically modest, evolutionary footing and argues that they fail. We contend that the focus on “systemic directionality” undercuts the emphasis placed on evolutionary learning and the epistemic limitations of centralised authority. Proper attention to these problems implies neither a laissez-faire/market fundamentalist position nor one that favours “systemic directionality.” Rather, it points towards a largely directionless environment where market-state entanglements arise through a polycentric evolutionism at multiple different scales.