Harnessing Science and Technology for America's Economic Future National and Regional Priorities (1999) / Chapter Skim
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The Global Environment of U.S. Science and Technology Policies
The Global Environment of U.S. Science and Technology Policies
Pages 83-112
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From page 83... ...
In addition, like other elements of modern capitalist economies, the R&D systems of the industrial economies (and, increasingly, those of the industrializing economies) are closely intertwined with one another.
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From page 84... ...
With the end of the Cold War and intensified global competition, governments face greater demands to deliver tangible economic returns from their investments of public funds in R&D projects and infrastructure. Such political demands can assume a nationalistic tone and have been associated with efforts by governments in Western Europe, Japan, and the United States to restrict access to publicly funded domestic technology development projects.
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From page 85... ...
The most recent debate cites differences among the "national innovation systems" of the industrial and newly industrializing economies, suggesting that asymmetries in U.S. and foreign firms' access to the technologies developed in one another's home economies creates disadvantages for U.S.
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From page 86... ...
Table M-3, drawn from Science and Engineering Indicators, compares the shares of industry-performed R&D in the United States and other industrial economies financed by foreign sources. Within the United States, this share more than doubled during 1980-1993 (from slightly more than 3 percent of industry-performed R&D in 1980 to 9.8 percent in 1993~; but as of 1993, industrial R&D in the United States was less dependent on foreign sources of funding than that in the United Kingdom or Canada, while exceeding levels of foreign-financed R&D in Japan and Germany.
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From page 87... ...
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From page 88... ...
The only reliable data on technology creation are patenting statistics, which have important drawbacks (e.g., the widely remarked differences among industries in their propensity to patent) , but nevertheless capture an important input into the innovation process that is "downstream" from R&D investment.
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From page 89... ...
suggest that the technology creation activities of large firms, measured by the site of the inventions underlying the U.S. patent applications of U.S.
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From page 90... ...
Their foreign inventive activities are sited primarily in Europe and the United States. If this measure suggests that technology creation remains "localized," other evidence suggests that the activities further downstream in the innovation process, such as development and exploitation of technology, are more international in scope.
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From page 91... ...
The growth in alliances in at least some high-technology industries also reflects the response of U.S. and foreign firms to nontariff barriers to trade and investment, as well as government policies that seek to restrict access to domestic strategic technology programs, such as SEMATECH in the United States and JESSI in Western Europe (Mowery, 1997~.
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From page 92... ...
parents, as offshore sites have become more attractive locations for advanced production operations than the United States. These trends might also result from stronger international intellectual property rights, which facilitate the arms-length transfer of technology between parent and affiliate.
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From page 93... ...
The data on foreign firms' patenting activity in the United States, licensing and royalty income, and international strategic alliances also suggest that the channels through which R&D "internationalization" takes place are expanding in number and changing in structure. Finally, as was noted above, it is important to keep in mind the imperfections in these measures.
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From page 94... ...
Other strategic alliances, however, result in high levels of interfirm learning and transfer of such capabilities, producing greater similarity among participants' technological capabilities. This observation underscores the broader point that both technology transfer and knowledge accumulation are aided by cross-national R&D investments and other international linkages in the innovation process.
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From page 95... ...
federal R&D budget from those of other industrial economies, including its size and emphasis on defense-related and health-related objectives, remain salient. This cross-national comparison of industrial-economy public R&D spending also includes the European Commission, whose civil R&D spending priorities contrast with those of both Western European member states and other industrial economies.
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From page 96... ...
system is industry, which accounted for 59 percent of total R&D spending in 1995. Industry-financed R&D scarcely grew at all in real terms during the early 1990s, but this trend was reversed in 1993, and the NSF data for 1993-1995 reveal that real industry-funded R&D spending grew at an average annual rate of nearly 10 percent during that period (NSF, 1998~.
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From page 97... ...
real federal spending on basic research increased slightly during this period, from $15.5 to almost $15.7 billion. Industry-funded investments in applied research scarcely grew during this period, while federal spending on applied research declined at an annual rate of nearly 4 percent.
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From page 98... ...
R&D spending trends compare with those of other major industrial economies? One of the most important and dramatic trends is the declining share of global R&D spending accounted for by the United States.
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From page 99... ...
In general, the shifts in funding sources in the United States and these other economies are slightly larger than the shifts in performance. Indeed, the contrasting magnitude of the shifts in funding sources, as opposed to R&D performance, reflects the difficulties of undertaking radical structural changes in national R&D systems of the sort observed in the United Kingdom.
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From page 100... ...
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From page 101... ...
These contrasts are heightened when the R&D budget of the European Commission, which accounts for roughly 4 percent of total government R&D spending in Western Europe, is added to a comparison of civil and defense-related R&D spending in 1991 and 1996 (Tables M-6 and M-7)
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From page 102... ...
were allocated by the European Commission in 1995 to support R&D in electronics. The Japanese government announced a new initiative in semiconductor-related R&D in 1996, involving public contributions of roughly $100 million to $110 million to a set of public-private collaborations whose total annual budget is nearly $200 million (Flamm, 1996~.
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From page 103... ...
Public R&D spending priorities in the United States contrast with those of other major industrial economies, contrasts that are heightened when the significant R&D programs of the European Commission are added to the comparison. The United States continues to devote a larger share of total public R&D spending to defense (a significant portion of which goes to support R&D in information technology and electronics, some of which in turn yields civilian technological "spin-offs"~.
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From page 104... ...
Japanese collaborative programs have suffered from the inability of program designers to develop a sufficiently robust and reliable "vision" of future technology developments to coordinate the R&D efforts of firms and universities effectively in "frontier" areas of science and technology that are subject to severe uncertainties. The pluralistic institutional and programmatic environment of the United States as well as the large-scale and highly competitive nature of the U.S.
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From page 105... ...
Moreover, the performance of these systems within most industrial economies depends on the actions and decisions of private enterprises, and these decisions can reinforce or offset the effects of public policies. Much of the current controversy over foreign firms' exploitation of U.S.
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From page 106... ...
the problems imposed by political requirements to capture the bulk of the economic returns from technology policies whose results may benefit foreign firms; and (2) the enduring tension between programs that support technology development and those supporting technology adoption.
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From page 107... ...
Many of the current restrictions on foreign participation, which differ among U.S. technology programs, base the determination of foreign-firm eligibility on assessments of home-country government policies, on the assumption that denial of access to foreign firms will increase pressure for
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From page 108... ...
firms' access to the strategic "technology" programs supported by other industrial economies. Japan's cooperative R&D programs long excluded foreign firms, although many of these restrictions have been relaxed in recent years.
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From page 109... ...
and foreign nations' R&D systems and on a more realistic conceptualization of the sources of the economic benefits associated with innovation. Rather than restricting foreign access to the results of publicly funded R&D in the United States, results that themselves are internationally mobile, policy makers should focus on strategies to improve the domestic adoption and implementation of new technologies from domestic and international sources.
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From page 110... ...
1996. Japan's New Semiconductor Technology Programs.
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From page 111... ...
1966. International investment and international trade in the product cycle.
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