The ideal fiscal stimulus measure not only creates jobs and drives economic activity in the short run but also boosts quality of life and economic growth in the medium and long run. Support for scientific research in the stimulus package accomplishes both goals. In this report, ITIF finds that spurring an additional $20 billion investment in our national research infrastructure will create or retain approximately 402,000 American jobs for one year.

ITIF uses 16 indicators to assess the global innovation-based competitiveness of 36 countries and 4 regions. This report finds that while the U.S. still leads the EU in innovation-based competitiveness, it ranks sixth overall. Moreover, the U.S. ranks last in progress toward the new knowledge-based innovation economy over the last decade.

Read the supplementary Innovation Fact Sheet.

In the Fall 2008/2009 issue of the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, ITIF lays out a framework for the new administration’s technology policy to help spur growth and progress throughout the economy and government.

Many forward-thinking countries have made innovation-led economic development a centerpiece of their national economic strategies during the past decade. While many nations have taken the innovation challenge to heart and put in place a host of policies to spur innovation, the United States has done little, consequently falling behind in innovation policies and risking falling behind in innovation performance as well. This article compares U.S. innovation policy to that of other leading industrialized countries across five topic areas: programs to establish civilian technology and innovation promotion agencies; services innovation initiatives; national levels of R&D funding; tax incentives for research and development; and policies regarding high-skill immigration.

Amar Bhidé’s new book, The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World, rightly observes that the venturesomeness of a country’s consumers, their demand for innovation consumption, is crucial to achieve an innovative economy. While true, this does not mean that an economy’s ability to produce innovations—based largely on the underlying scientific and technological strength of its workforce and industries—is unimportant.

If the tectonic economic events of the last few months have shown us anything it’s that many of the core assumptions embedded in the prevailing neoclassical economic doctrine that drives much of Washington’s thinking on economic policy are no longer valid. Moreover, recent theoretical and empirical work has called into question the core tenents of the neo-classical doctrine that markets are stable, are driven by rational actors responding solely to price signals, and require little role for government in driving growth. In this article in The Democracy Journal Rob Atkinson reviews two new books that present important critiques to neo-classical economics: The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wreck Markets, Stops Innovation and Costs Lives by Michael Heller and The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric Beinhocker.