The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic that emerged at the start of 2020 has impacted the global economy and public health to an unprecedented extent. This anthology analyzes the economic and public health impact and policy responses of 20 nations and regions.
The State New Economy Index uses 25 indicators to measure the extent to which state economies are knowledge-based, globalized, entrepreneurial, IT-driven, and innovation-oriented.
A recent majority staff report summarizing the findings of a yearlong House Antitrust Subcommittee investigation into competition in digital markets is filled with analytical errors that highlight larger problems with the report’s basic framing and policy conclusions.
Pundits and activists have looked at the reduced share of U.S. national income going to workers and have simply asserted that the cause is increased market concentration. This assessment is misplaced.
China’s subsidy-aided rise to dominance in PV manufacturing has driven prices way down, but at the cost of undermining promising alternative technological pathways. Policymakers should adopt measures to sustain greater diversity in PV and similar technologies.
Tech policy broadly defined becomes more important each presidential election, and this one is no different. As it has in every cycle since 2008, ITIF provides a side-by-side comparison of the nominees’ positions on key issues related to the progress of technological innovation.
Many countries rightly seek to maximize their value added in the global semiconductor industry. But like-minded allied nations can also advance their leadership collectively by collaborating on technology and ecosystem development, intellectual property, and trade liberalization.
The U.S. government should triple its annual investment in energy innovation over the next five years to speed clean energy transitions around the world and build advanced-energy industries at home.
Recent advances in gene editing offer promising opportunities to mitigate emissions from agriculture and other sectors, and to capture carbon from the atmosphere. Governments should accelerate the development and deployment of these solutions.
Citizens and businesses rely on government websites to access important information and services. Unfortunately, many Colombian government websites fail to meet basic website standards for security, speed, mobile friendliness, and accessibility.
The United States continues to fall far behind comparable countries in the level of tax support it provides to spur research and development. Increasing the R&D credit would boost American’s real incomes through innovation, productivity, and competitiveness.
China is striving to become the global leader in biopharmaceuticals, but many of its policy steps are “innovation mercantilist” in nature. This not only is expected to threaten U.S. leadership, but also slow global life sciences innovation, with negative consequences for cures and treatments.
China will likely be the biggest business disruptor of the 2020s, but the discussion about how to respond has yet to take shape. A strategic framework should rebalance the global supply chains, bolster competitiveness, adjust to China’s market size, and solidify the West’s appeal.
Collaborations between climate-tech start-ups and government partners enhance start-up patenting and follow-on financing more than comparable collaborations with private firms or universities. Policies that foster them should be strengthened.
What happened? How did America go from the world’s leader to not even an also-ran in the span of just two decades? Equally troubling, why did no one sound the alarm bell when there was still time for action?
With nearly three dozen new additions, the latest update of ITIF’s “Tech Policy To-Do List” provides a menu of hundreds of actionable ideas for Congress and the administration to foster innovation, growth, and progress.
Few policymakers and even fewer pundits or economic analysts understand U.S. competitiveness problems in a way that would lead them to the logical conclusion that a national innovation and competitiveness strategy would count as a viable solution.
Many say the decline in new business formation over the past 30 years has been caused by increased monopoly. But there is no statistical relationship between start-up creation and change in concentration by industry; high-growth start-up activity is healthy.
The rapid growth of large Internet platforms has caused some activists, scholars, and political officials to worry about their impact on competition. These concerns are largely misplaced.
If the United States is serious about maintaining its leadership in biopharmaceuticals, then it’s time for policymakers to articulate and embrace a robust sectoral competitiveness strategy.
U.S. broadband networks weathered the COVID-19 surge in traffic better than most peer nations. The pandemic should galvanize policymakers to ensure broadband can serve as an essential lifeline for everyone, including low-income and rural residents.
Law enforcement argues that “warrant-proof” encryption presents a unique and urgent threat by preventing them from accessing user data. But history shows that government efforts to subvert encryption would negatively impact individuals and businesses. As such, banning the technology is not the answer.
Not really. Despite the measured rise in concentration in some industries, in the vast majority of markets it remains well below the levels that would normally trigger antitrust concerns.
Alarmists claim the tech sector’s carbon footprint is mushrooming out of control. But they wildly misrepresent the facts. Not only is the ICT sector making significant progress in decarbonizing, but ICT is also a powerful technology that enables other sectors to become more energy efficient.
China’s state-backing of Huawei and ZTE allowed these companies to seize global market share from more innovative international competitors, reducing their growth in sales and investments in R&D. This, in turn, hurt global innovation in the industry.
COVID-19 has prompted calls for reshoring of medical goods, including strict “Buy American” prescriptions. While reshoring is important, “Buy American” fails to recognize the value of the global supply chain and avoids addressing the real problem, China.
5G wireless will drive economic growth for decades to come, but we need a comprehensive strategy to ensure a robust deployment and adoption of secure networks. A U.S. strategy for 5G should play to our strengths to overcome unfair practices that have made Huawei a leader.
Further stimulus in response to the COVID-19 crisis should focus not just on short-term recovery, but also the long-term competitiveness of key technologically sophisticated, traded-sector industries. Now is the time to recognize America needs a robust industrial strategy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed gaps in society’s digital readiness for social distancing. If policymakers seize the opportunity to address these gaps, they can make it easier to manage the next pandemic while providing significant long-term social and economic benefits.
The federal government should take aggressive steps to spur the development of more tech hubs in America’s heartland by identifying promising metro areas and helping them transform into self-sustaining innovation centers.