Data protection regulations are often falsely described as means to increase consumer trust, and therefore technology adoption and use. Policymakers should be wary of those making this claim without evidence.
Trump’s approach to tariffs has drawn widespread criticism, sparking a debate in which partisans have made all sorts of claims and counter-claims. This briefing sets the record straight on 10 important points of fact.
A menu of actionable ideas for the Trump administration and 115th Congress to foster innovation, growth, and progress.
Evidence shows a carbon tax will induce innovation that will lower the cost of reducing CO2 emissions. If the revenues are recycled to expand tax incentives for research and capital investment, a modest carbon tax would likely lead to faster GDP growth.
Despite assertions by President Trump that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is charging too little for package delivery, the evidence shows that package delivery is not subsidized and, in fact, that package revenue is playing a key role in shoring up shaky USPS finances.
Boosting transatlantic cooperation on ICT policy would allow Canada, the EU, and the United States to address global ICT challenges and support their domestic economies by raising productivity.
Business R&D growth over the past three decades has been anemic, and companies are focusing more on near-term product development, less on basic and applied research. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is cutting support for research while many other countries are expanding support.
Instead of overregulating, governments should adopt a policy framework based on the principle of “algorithmic accountability” to promote innovation while holding human operators responsible for harmful outcomes.
Accelerating energy innovation by manufacturers in America would boost economic growth and global competitiveness, while addressing key national security and environmental goals. But market failures lead to gaps in the private sector’s response to this imperative. That’s where the Department of Energy’s Manufacturing USA innovation institutes come in.
There is ample room for a bipartisan compromise that would simultaneously lock in noncontroversial bright-line protections, end the absurd back-and-forth on FCC jurisdiction, and secure funding to help close the digital divide.
Congress should continue on the path toward doubling federal energy RD&D funding, which would fulfill a commitment the United States made along with 19 other countries to accelerate the global transition to cleaner, more affordable, more reliable energy.
This provocative new book now available from The MIT Press shows small businesses are not the drivers of our prosperity. Big firms are better for job creation, productivity, innovation, and most other economic benefits. Governments should stop tipping the scales toward small and adopt “size neutral” policies that encourage companies of all sizes to grow.
Twenty-five case studies underscore how innovators in developing countries—often enabled by robust IP rights—are achieving advances in life sciences and healthcare that benefit people around the world.
The digitalization of manufacturing is changing how products are designed, fabricated, used, and serviced, just as it’s transforming the operations, processes, and energy footprint of factories and supply chains.
America’s lead in life sciences is being challenged. Other countries are aggressively seeking to attract and grow companies with innovation-based tax incentives, a range of firm-specific enticements, increased government research funding, improved IP protections, and streamlined regulatory approval processes. The federal government should act to ensure U.S. life sciences remain competitive.
In a report for the Canadian government ahead of the G7 Ministerial on Innovation and Employment, ITIF discusses why the coming technology wave is a progressive force G7 nations should embrace.
The EU’s new data privacy rules, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), will have a negative impact on the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Europe, putting EU firms at a competitive disadvantage compared with their competitors in North America and Asia.
Raising the cost of ICT products by levying tariffs on ICT imports from China would reduce growth in U.S. ICT investments, which would lower productivity growth, and thus economic growth.
Rather than slow down technological disruption to protect a small number of workers at the expense of the vast majority who are benefiting, policymakers should focus on doing significantly more to help those who are displaced transition successfully into new jobs and occupations.
Most competitiveness strategies focus on broad measures such as improving the business environment or supporting better factor inputs for firms. While necessary, these steps do not constitute an effective competitiveness strategy. Policymakers must go much deeper.
The number of technology-based start-ups surged 47 percent in the last decade. These firms still account for a relatively small share of all businesses, but they have an outsized impact on economic growth, because they provide better-paying, longer-lasting jobs than other start-ups, and they contribute more to innovation, productivity, and competitiveness.
China’s systematic mercantilism is a threat to the U.S. economy and the very soul of the global trading system. America cannot respond with either flaccid appeasement or economic nationalism; it must assemble an international coalition that pressures China to stop rigging markets and start competing on fair terms.
Contrary to popular perceptions, the labor market is not experiencing unprecedented technological disruption. In fact, occupational churn in the United States is at a historic low. It is time stop worrying and start accelerating productivity with more technological innovation.
While data-driven innovation is a global phenomenon, some regions are better poised to enjoy the resulting benefits because they have invested in and supported the conditions necessary to succeed in the data economy. This is also true within the United States.
A growing number of countries are making it more expensive and time consuming, if not illegal, to transfer data overseas. This reduces economic growth and undercuts social value.
Productivity is the key to improving living standards—so policymakers should ignore conventional economists who say there is little government can do about it and instead make it the principal goal of economic policy.
America’s innovation-driven, high-tech economy isn’t concentrated around a few hubs like Silicon Valley; it is widely diffused—and every state and congressional district has a stake in its success.
This book delivers a critical wake-up call: a fierce global race for innovation advantage is under way, and while other nations are making support for technology and innovation a central tenet of their economic strategies and policies, America lacks a robust innovation policy.