Economic Theory

The rivalry between the United States and China has significant diplomatic, military, and ideological aspects, but its most important dimensions are technological and economic.

A new White House report insinuates that small firms are America’s true innovators. Advancing this narrative makes it easier to advance an anticorporate antitrust agenda, including banning all mergers. However, scholarly studies and data do not support the administration’s premise.

As Rob Atkinson writes in Regulation, Piketty, Gordon, and DeLong all argue that economic growth is no longer an engine of widespread prosperity. This is a big reason for their books’ acclaim: rejecting growth and markets is now de rigueur among much of the Western intelligentsia.

For virtually our entire history, Americans have supported increased productivity, even as it led to some worker displacement, because they have understood that productivity is the sin quo non of increased wages and living standards. Unfortunately, a dangerous myth has emerged over the last decade that productivity and wage growth are decoupled.

ITIF hosted a spirited debate between ITIF President Rob Atkinson and economist Simon Johnson, author of the new book Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity.

Strengthening antitrust laws purely based on a big-is-bad ethos will not benefit consumers and, in many circumstances, will impede the most effective businesses from expanding.

Please join ITIF for an all-day conference with leading experts and policymakers to explore why and how Washington can look to Hamiltonianism for guidance in how to win the techno-economic contest with China.

The struggle to understand data leads to bad analogies—that it is the new oil, the new bacon, or the new gold—and to bad government policies, as policymakers can’t make an informed cost-benefit analysis of digital policies, such as privacy, cybersecurity, digital trade, or innovation.

The recent alteration of the global geopolitical environment has brought into stark reality the weaknesses of long-running economic shifts (and proactive actions) that have favoured China—giving it market dominance and trade leverage throughout industries and supply chains. The future is going to be anything but certain, and Australia, the United States and their allies must be prepared.

Embracing national developmentalism will be critical to enabling America to meet the existential challenge that is China.