With the rise of China, the U.S. economic and technology environment has fundamentally and inexorably changed. America needs an advanced technology industrial policy to compete effectively—but that will require modernizing hidebound economic thinking that has long considered “industry policy” to be anathema.
Publications: Robert D. Atkinson
March 24, 2021
Many argue that spending on physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, water systems, etc.) drives long-term economic growth. But is this really true, especially when compared to other kinds of public investments?
March 19, 2021
If the United States is to stay ahead of China militarily and technologically, it will need to put in place a new national innovation system that focuses on making U.S. advanced technology leadership—in both innovation and production—the central organizing principle of U.S. economic and national security policy.
March 16, 2021
This represents a perilous moment. Attempts to turn antitrust into a populist tool to dismantle large corporations will yield slower growth in living standards, static wages, and weak competitiveness.
March 15, 2021
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
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 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.