Publications: Robert D. Atkinson

It’s time to think big and bold. The United States should pursue a super-automation moonshot by establishing 50 to 100 demonstration factories that deploy state-of-the-art automation technologies.

Instead, they will boost productivity, lower prices and spur the evolution of the labor market.

Call me heartless, but nothing would make me happier than seeing 50 percent of American jobs automated over the next decade or so. Automation and displacement equal progress.

The best way to put a chicken in every family pot is by supporting policies that raise median per-capita income.

Assuming the Trump administration is serious about shrinking government, why not eliminate an agency whose sole purpose is to distort market outcomes by privileging firm size over performance and productivity? When it comes to government waste, the Small Business Administration is low-hanging fruit that has been over-ripe for a long time.

When the history is written about why the world didn’t solve climate change as it should have, much of the blame should be placed on the environmentalists who gave short shrift to the critical need for innovation—and even attacked those who called for it.

President Trump has announced his intention to regulate U.S. drug prices. But the arguments in favor of doing so are wrong. Price controls reduce development of new treatments and cures, and hurt U.S. biopharmaceutical competitiveness.

A deindustrialized nation, which the United States is on the path to becoming, is not a strong nation. Especially not when China is doing everything it can to dominate the world’s advanced, dual-use industries.

Instead of throwing out the corporate baby with the bathwater, how about some nuance in the justified critique of neoliberalism?

In the Trump and China era, South Korea must move beyond export-led growth. Scaling up small firms and boosting productivity in services must be national imperatives.