The US is considered to be the home of the most virulent form of capitalism. This could be seen in the pride of place accorded to private sector enterprises in that country, and it is also Extract from Sunil Mani article:
The home of some of the largest and most innovative companies in a range of industries. In the area of medical R&D in general and in the development of vaccines, the federal government in the US has worked very closely with the market. What they did is easily visible from a range of instruments that the federal government has invoked to jump-start the R&D and production of vaccines for a new and unknown disease. A survey of these support instruments reveals that they have tried out every tool of state support available in the book. But the most important of which is the importance that the US has given to fundamental research on vaccines, which eventually helped it develop highly effective vaccines within a brief period. The US has now gone a step further in assigning a greater role for the government, even applied developmental research. This has manifested in the senate passing a new bill called the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 in June 2021. This is an essential lesson for countries such as India that it must support basic research on vaccine development in one of its numerous public laboratories. The second lesson that the US case has for us is the prime importance of involving the public sector. In the US, this is confined to the performance and finance of R&D itself. In the case of India, the public sector must be involved not only in the performance and financing of R&D but also in the manufacturing of vaccines as considerable installed capacity exists in the industry.
Further, the public sector laboratories and institutes have a long history of manufacturing and supplying high-quality vaccines. They must be involved in vaccine production for COVID-19, even if it is only in the long run. In other words, the public and private sectors must complement each other. The government can play an essential role in crafting the sectoral system of innovation of the COVID-19 vaccine industry, just like what the US has done it already. The third lesson for India is that the state must play an active and timely role in improving the availability of critical inputs for manufacturing and distributing vaccines in an industry whose value chain is globally distributed. The three issues indicate a more significant role for industrial policy than what is practised on an ad hoc basis now. Recent events and discussions have shown that a historically free-market-oriented economy such as that of the US is finding much relevance for a more significant role for industrial policy. In comparison, a historically state-directed economy such as India seems to be moving towards a more substantial role for the market with potential adverse consequences.
Further reading: https://www.epw.in/journal/2022/48/special-articles/role-industrial-policy-market-friendly-economies.html
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