As hard as it is to believe, there was a time—before the New Deal—when economists were largely treated like any other interest group, occasionally saying something interesting, but usually ignored
Publications
March 15, 2021
the core challenge now for the Korean innovation economy is to fully make the switch from being a “fast follower” (an economy in which firms are not on the global leading edge of innovation, but rapidly copy the leaders) to being a global innovation leader.
March 15, 2021
Public support for R&D is critical to bridge the gap in incentivizing technological progress. Three Portuguese economists examined the investment impact of tax incentives for “intangible investments,” another term for non-physical investments that increase productivity, such as human capital, software, and innovation.
March 12, 2021
Healthy enterprises are the prerequisites for production, which in turn is the prerequisite for consumption, growth, and prosperity.
March 12, 2021
Big businesses are under intense scrutiny these days as a populist antitrust movement gathers momentum. But the truth is large firms treat their workers far better than small firms do. They’re also more innovative, contribute more to the economy—and have a better track record of advancing a host of other progressive goals.
March 12, 2021
The sectors that have suffered the most in the pandemic are laggard sectors—laggard, that is, in moving from old-fashioned, labor-intensive and low-wage business models to innovative, capital-intensive, technology- and skilled-based ways of delivering goods and services. Upgrading these backward industries into high-wage, technology-intensive sectors must be a priority.
March 10, 2021
To advance their goals of economic redistribution, progressives—relying on faulty research, half-truths, and erroneous claims—have delegitimized the long-accepted “consumer welfare” approach to antitrust and generated a groundswell of support for a new “public interest” standard that seeks to protect competitors, especially small businesses.
March 9, 2021
Amidst an unprecedented pace of innovation, some 90 developing nations, led by India and South Africa, have petitioned the WTO’s TRIPS Council calling for a waiver to suspend all IP rights associated with COVID-19 innovations—again asserting the false narrative that IP rights inhibit access to medicines.
March 8, 2021
“Anti-monopoly” is now the solution de jour for all that ails the U.S. economy, just as it was in the early New Deal. That latest example of this trend is the “Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act” (or “CALERA”), introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, in an effort to “better protect competition in the American economy.”
March 8, 2021
The Biden administration’s infrastructure package should include $5 billion over five years in cost-shared demonstration projects that seek to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy industries such as steel, cement, and chemicals.