U.S. R&D expenditures account for about 31% of the worldwide total, down from 38% a decade earlier. The combined R&D expenditures of 10 Asian economies rose steadily to reach U.S. levels in 2009, driven mostly by China, now the second largest R&D performing nation.
This statistic reminds us that China and other countries are not merely the world's factories, churning out a...
Information and communications technology (ICT) constitutes one of the global economy's most important industries. In fact, global value-added by ICT industries more than doubled from $1.2 trillion in 1995 to $2.8 trillion in 2010, and today the ICT industry accounts for 6 percent of global GDP. ICT industries also account for a similar share of employment; for example, in 2010, ICT industries...
The understanding that the most important goal in economic development is attracting out-of-state business establishments is flawed. As such, less attention is given to helping existing firms grow and helping new firms start up. In the New Economy, entrepreneurship is much more important than firm attraction is to economic success. Consider the fact that the number of industrial manufacturing...
If we want to emerge more vigorously from the recent recession and loosing the race for global innovation and competitiveness, we need to commit to investing in the "four Ts" of innovation: trade, taxes, technology and talent. Investing in talent means more than simply spending more money. It requires rethinking how students learn and how to best nurture their talents and interests. As...
The general perception of the construction industry productivity is declining -0.6 % per year (+1.8% per year non-farm productivity increase; significant improvement in some work processes). There has been much debate over the root cause of this decline. It can almost certainly be attributed to underinvestment in construction R&D, a shift in output mix, and slow growth in capital/worker...
The implications of this fact are that high-growth firms, often found in high-tech industries such as advanced manufacturing, are critical job creators and core drivers of economic growth. Mom-and-pop businesses can flourish only when these high-growth firms flourish. The challenge for state and federal policymakers is to nurture the development of these cutting-edge firms, including by...
The first week of 2012 saw an announcement that the unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent coincided with recent reports that manufacturing activity has picked up. But don't assume we are headed for smooth sailing. While good news about manufacturing is welcome, it is unwise to jump to conclusions. We have lost more manufacturing jobs in the last ten years than we lost in the Great...
Flurry Analytics, a firm that helps mobile application developers make better apps, deepen consumer engagement and monetize applications, discovered that in the middle of last year our relationship with the Internet underwent yet another transformation. The firm found we spent 81 minutes a day in apps versus 74 minutes in a browser. A year ago, the tally had been an average of 64 minutes in a...
The proliferation of smart phone apps shows that innovation is alive and well in information and communications technology. It also serves as a reminder that public policies must adapt to and encourage these developments so that we can continue to expand economic opportunities in mobile broadband and beyond. Smart phone apps also raise new questions for consumer privacy, self-regulation in the...
Astounding advances in recent years in the natural sciences and biotechnology has put us at the dawn of a "bio-economy." Life-sustaining scientific advances and significant economic opportunities will go hand-and-glove in this economy. Unfortunately, U.S. regulatory policies are not keeping up with science and political leadership is needed to turn back ideological and unfounded fears about...