Although tarnished, you report, industrial policy is coming back to life (“Tinker, Tailor,” October 1, 2011). Economists are now seeking ways to reintroduce it as a prop of fiscal policy, but they are looking for ways to skirt its many faults. Lobbying and cozy deals are among them. All this stands to reason, but you do not mention one crucial ingredient of a sensible industrial policy that is lacking at present: credible industrial statistics. Most important, such statistics should be built around sufficiently detailed input-output tables showing all the inter-industry flows, as well as all the other components of national income accounts on the industrial level. Eventually, such tables show what changes in demand for one industry’s output can do for the output of all the other industries. Not for nothing has Wassily Leontief received his Nobel prize in 1973. Since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, though, such tables have fallen by the wayside. According to them and their economic advisors, statistics were for the birds. The market already knew all there was to know about all the key ingredients of economic decision making. So many years hence, economists know next to nothing about the industrial structure and its changes over time. Industrial economics as a field is moribund. Tarnished or not, industrial policy is bound to fail again if it is not supported by information equal to the task. It is high time to bring input-output tables to the center of fiscal policy once again. Lobbying and cozy deals are the obvious alternative.