Productivity And Cyclicality In Semiconductors

Hosted by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, this symposium brought together leading technologists and economists to review technical challenges facing the semiconductor industry, the industry's business cycle, the interconnections between the two, and the implications of growth in semiconductors for the economy as a whole. This volume includes a summary of the symposium proceedings and three major research papers. Topics reviewed encompass the industry technology roadmap, challenges to be overcome to maintain the trajectory of Moore's Law, the drivers of the continued growth in productivity in the U.S. economy, and economic models for gaining a better understanding of this leading U.S. industry.

This report summarizes a workshopâ€"Strengthening Science-Based Decision-Making: Implementing the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants held June 7-10, 2004, in Beijing, China. The presentations and discussions summarized here describe the types of scientific information necessary to make informed decisions to eliminate the production and use of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) banned under the Stockholm Convention, sources of information; scientifically informed strategies for eliminating POPs, elements of good scientific advice, such as transparency, peer review, and disclosure of conflicts of interest; and information dealing with POPs that decision makers need from the scientific community, including next steps to make such science available and ensure its use on a continuing basis.

This report summarizes a workshopâ€"Strengthening Science-Based Decision-Making: Implementing the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants held June 7-10, 2004, in Beijing, China. The presentations and discussions summarized here describe the types of scientific information necessary to make informed decisions to eliminate the production and use of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) banned under the Stockholm Convention, sources of information; scientifically informed strategies for eliminating POPs, elements of good scientific advice, such as transparency, peer review, and disclosure of conflicts of interest; and information dealing with POPs that decision makers need from the scientific community, including next steps to make such science available and ensure its use on a continuing basis.

Starting in the mid 1990s, the United States economy experienced an unprecedented upsurge in economic productivity. Rapid technological change in communications, computing, and information management continue to promise further gains in productivity, a phenomenon often referred to as the New Economy. To better understand the sources of these gains and the policy measures needed to sustain these positive trends, the National Academies Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) convened a series of workshops and commissioned papers on Measuring and Sustaining the New Economy. This workshop, entitled "The Telecommunications Challenge: Changing Technologies and Evolving Policies," brought together leading industry representatives and government officials to discuss issues generated by the rapid technological change occurring in the telecommunications industry and the regulatory and policy challenges this creates. The workshop presented a variety of perspectives relating to developments in the telecommunications industry such as the potential of and impediments to broadband technology.

Technological innovation and growth are critical to U.S. competitiveness in a global economy. One means of facilitating growth and improving competitiveness is to foster more robust innovation ecosystems through the development of public-private partnerships, industry consortia, and other regional and national economic development initiatives. Public-private partnerships, in particular, catalyze the commercialization of state and national investments in research and development. One of the major projects of the National Research Council's Board on Science Technology and Economic Policy (STEP) is to examine state and local investment programs designed to attract and grow knowledge-based industries. STEP analyzes state and regional innovation initiatives to gain a better understanding of the challenges associated with the transition of research into products, the practices associated with successful state and regional programs, and their interaction with federal programs and private initiatives. In April and July 2009, STEP convened two meeting to assess the future of the U.S. photovoltaic industry and the practical steps that the federal government and some state and regional governments are taking to develop the capacity to manufacture photovoltaics competitively. The Future of Photovoltaic Manufacturing in the United States captures the presentations and discussions of these meetings. This report explores the prospects for cooperative R&D efforts, standards, and roadmapping efforts that could accelerate innovation and growth of a U.S. photovoltaics industry. It includes both efforts to strengthen existing industries as well as specific new technology focus areas such as nanotechnology, stem cells, and energy in order to gain an improved understanding of program goals, challenges, and accomplishments.

"Measuring innovation is a challenging task, both for researchers and for national statisticians. This task is timely and valuable given that policy and public interest in innovation has become increasingly intense in this era of digital revolution, yet National GDP Accounts and other economic statistics do not fully account for the wide range of innovative activity that is plainly evident in everyday experience. Indeed, innovation has in many ways changed the structure of an increasingly digitized marketplace, from cloud computing to the gig economy. The papers collected in this volume, Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century, address many different dimensions of this challenge, ranging from how to best to define GDP to the fundamental question of what is an innovation and how to collect data at the level of an individual innovation. Taken together, the volume provides a comprehensive overview of the cutting-edge of this widely varied but thematically-connected research that draws on multiple methodologies and data. The editors and authors consider how measurement frameworks could be expanded to enhance our understanding of innovative activity; new approaches and evidence that could account for innovation's economic impact; innovation's effect across the economy, from production processes to labor markets and financial activities; and what practical adjustments could be made to current measurements that would better capture innovation. The distinctive stance of this volume makes clear that the challenge of measuring innovation and understanding its implications has become increasingly complex as the economy has evolved. The editors and authors show that the limitations of our existing measurement system significantly hinder researchers, analysts, and policymakers. Better measures of innovative activity are necessary to interpret the consequences of innovation in daily life and to inform policies that best promote the attendant benefits, including distribution of income, trademark protections, and more. Now, in an era of fake news and alternative facts, it is more important than ever to push for accuracy in basic economic facts"--

Military and defense-related procurement has been an important source of technology development across a broad spectrum of industries that account for an important share of United States industrial production. In this book, the author focuses on six general-purpose technologies: interchangeable parts and mass production; military and commercial aircraft; nuclear energy and electric power; computers and semiconductors; the INTERNET; and the space industries. In each of these industries, technology development would have occurred more slowly, and in some case much more slowly or not at all, in the absence of military and defense-related procurement. The book addresses three questions that have significant implications for the future growth of the United States economy. One is whether changes in the structure of the United States economy and of the defense-industrial base preclude military and defense-related procurement from playing the role in the development of advanced technology in the future, comparable to the role it has played in the past. A second question is whether public support for commercially oriented research and development will become an important source of new general-purpose technologies. A third and more disturbing question is whether a major war, or the threat of major war, will be necessary to mobilize the scientific, technical, and financial resources necessary to induce the development of new general-purpose technologies. When the history of United States technology development in the next half century is written, it will focus on incremental rather than revolutionary changes in both military and commercial technology. It will also be written within the context of slower productivity growth than of the relatively high rates that prevailed in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s or during the information technology bubble that began in the early 1990s. These will impose severe constraints on the capacity of the United States to sustain a global-class military posture and a position of leadership in the global economy.

Starting in the mid 1990s, the United States economy experienced an unprecedented upsurge in economic productivity. Rapid technological change in communications, computing, and information management continue to promise further gains in productivity, a phenomenon often referred to as the New Economy. To better understand this phenomenon, the National Academies Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) has convened a series of workshops and commissioned papers on Measuring and Sustaining the New Economy. This major workshop, entitled Deconstructing the Computer, brought together leading industrialists and academic researchers to explore the contribution of the different components of computers to improved price-performance and quality of information systems. The objective was to help understand the sources of the remarkable growth of American productivity in the 1990s, the relative contributions of computers and their underlying components, and the evolution and future contributions of the technologies supporting this positive economic performance.