Following World War II, the U.S. manufacturing sector emerged as the dominant industrial force in the world in virtually all areas, including productivity, market share, innovations, and capital investments. Though other countries have caught up with and surpassed the United States in many industries, Romesh Diwan and Chandana Chakraborty argue that America can recapture its dominant role by moving forcefully into high-technology industries. In this work, they examine competitiveness in a range of high-technology enterprises, analyzing the industries as an aggregate as well as through three specific examples: semi-conductors, telecommunications, and computers. The authors provide a complete understanding of the technical changes and developments that are taking place in U.S. high technology, and offer guidance to policy makers in promoting competitive strength. Their work defines and quantifies the high-tech industrial sector of the U.S, economy, and analyzes the productivity of this sector by utilizing a translog cost function, which provides information about the structure of the input-output relations in a particular industry. Using these functions, Diwan and Chakraborty answer quantitatively a number of questions relating to the growth of various inputs, productivities, and outputs, which lead to conclusions regarding the structure of production, costs, and capacity in U.S. industry. Their conclusions--that technical change is biased in the main in favor of capital and material, and that capital and skilled labor are complements--are consistent with new ideas and theories in the field. This work will be a valuable reference source for professional economists and policy experts, as well as for scholars and students in international trade, finance, and development.

Maintaining the innovation capabilities of firms, employees and institutions is a key component for the generation of sustainable growth, employment, and high income in industrial societies. Gaining insights into the German innovation system and the institutional framework is as important to policy making as is data on the endowment of the German economy with factors fostering innovation and their recent development. Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research has repeatedly commissioned reports on the competitive strength of the German innovation system since the mid-eighties. The considerable attention that the public and the political, administrative and economic actors have paid to these reports in the past few years proves the strong interest in the assessment of and indicators for the dynamics behind innovation activities. The present study closely follows the pattern of those carried out before. It has been extended, however, to include an extensive discussion on indicators for technological performance and an outline of the key features of the German innovation system.

How is technology changing the nature of global competition? Can governments devise policies that help to create comparative advantages for national firms? An international group of experts in trade and technology policy addresses these questions in a book that contributes to a better understanding of how U.S. approaches to such policies differ from those of other industrialized countries. It explores current trends in trade and technology policies and the consequences for U.S. economic competitiveness. Topics discussed include the changing positions of the United States, Japan, and Germany in technological and trade competition, the management of trade conflict in high-technology industries, and new approaches to linking trade and technology policy. The book highlights the critical interplay of domestic and international policies and underscores the need for policymakers to achieve greater complementarity between their domestic and international economic policies.