Enterprise Policy

To beat China, the U.S. must revitalize many of the core principles in the 1950s business creed and foster a business community that embraces a national industrial strategy.

Korea’s highly educated workforce is increasingly stuck in low-quality jobs. This is not due to a lack of skill, but rather to government policies that penalize growth and fragment markets. Korea must embrace size neutrality, reforming regulations and incentives to support firms that innovate, scale, and compete globally.

Canada has zero entries among the world’s top 50 science and tech clusters. Waterloo is the best candidate for elevation. To make that happen, the federal and Ontario governments should create an incentive: Tech start-ups based in Waterloo, as well as firms outside Canada that relocate meaningful R&D and innovation production to the region, will pay no tax for a decade.

In reality, we live in a global economy that requires large, integrated firms to advance national success. That means embracing multinationals, not demonizing them.

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.

A recent working paper finds that management quality plays a pivotal role in determining whether firms expand, contract, acquire, or shut down.

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.

The goal of industrial policy is to align business activity with national interest. So, why not use the tax code to reward companies that drive exports, domestic investment, R&D, and workforce training?

A new fixed effects model finds that larger firms pay between 11 and 20 percent higher wages than small firms.

Nations with businesses that spend more on R&D experience fewer firm closures. As such, policymakers should incentivize domestic businesses to invest more in R&D if they want to see industries succeed and grow, boosting the overall economy.