The Advanced Technology Program Assessing Outcomes (2001) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Background
Background
Pages 23-58
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 25... ...
BACKGROUND At this writing, the American economy continues to enjoy steady growth, with inflation under tight control, unemployment at historically low levels, and productivity at higher levels than previous decades.2 It is hard to remember that only 10 years ago many thought the American economy had been surpassed by the combination of patient capital, skilled engineering, and protected domestic markets that characterized the Japanese and other Asian economies. In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States recorded slow economic growth relative to post-war ~ This is the second report on the ATP issued as part of the NRC review.
|
From page 26... ...
12-40. For a review of the main features of the East Asian economic success story, see World Bank, The East Asian Economic Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy, Policy Research Report, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
|
From page 27... ...
, the Federal Technology Transfer Act (1986) , the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act (1988)
|
From page 28... ...
cit., pp. 184-189, and National Research Council, Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999, passim.
|
From page 29... ...
See also Richard Samuels, Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. ii In response to changing procurement needs, the Clinton Administration adopted a "dual use" strategy for defense procurement.
|
From page 30... ...
. Some of the other major federal partnerships of this period were the Department of Defense' s Manufacturing Technology (MANTECH)
|
From page 31... ...
481. i9 The Semiconductor Industry Association formally proposed the SEMATECH consortium in May 1987.
|
From page 32... ...
Those members of the administration whose priority was to reduce the budget deficit scaled back support for public-private R&D. At the same time, some Members of Congress professed to believe that President Clinton and his party might reap political benefit from the ATP awards.
|
From page 33... ...
Noll, The Technology Pork Barrel, Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1991, pp.
|
From page 34... ...
33 Ibid. The authors identify defining technological successes such as computers, the Internet, hybrid seeds, and aircraft.
|
From page 35... ...
39-40. See also Martin Brown, Impacts of National Technology Programs, Paris: OECD, 1995, especially Chapter 2.
|
From page 37... ...
The semiconductor industry, seen as an enabling or strategic sector, has long benefited from government support in this country and abroad.4i In Japan and elsewhere, the SEMATECH consortium is seen as a major contribution to the resurgence of the American semiconductor industry.42 Japan has launched an innovative series of public-pnvate partnerships based in part on the SEMATECH model with the objective of restoring the competitive position of its semiconductor industry.43 These cooperative activities are by no means confined to traditional competitors for high-technology industry. Finland has a more general program of technology development called Tekes, which brings together key elements of Finnish technology strategy under a single directorate.
|
From page 38... ...
The scope of federal cooperative activity includes programs such as the national manufacturing initiative, the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering Research Centers, NSF's Science and Technology Centers, NIST's Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program, and the multi-agency Small Business Innovation Research Program, among others.
|
From page 39... ...
Initiated as a means of funding high-nsk R&D with broad commercial and societal benefits that would not be undertaken by a single company, either because the risk was too high or because a large enough share of the benefits of success would not accrue to the company for it to make the investment, the program lacked the straightforward national security rationale that had underpinned many post-war U.S. technology programs.
|
From page 40... ...
Balutis and Barbara Lambis, "The ATP Competition Structure" in this volume. See also the paper by Rosalie Ruegg "Taking a Step Back: An Early Results Overview of Fifty ATP Awards" in this volume.
|
From page 41... ...
ATP awards are of fixed duration, and involve limited funding. They focus on the development of enabling technologies that have the potential for economic benefits beyond those that can be captured by the innovating firmest.
|
From page 42... ...
Essentially, after an initial ramp up in the early years of the Clinton Administration to $340 million, the program stabilized at around $200 million annually with a reduction in FY2000 due in part to the program' s inability to fully allocate its funds. Partly as a result of administrative miscalculation, the ATP budget for FY2000 was $143 million, down sharply from $197 million in the previous year.
|
From page 43... ...
One analysis of the program addressed the difficulty of identifying projects with substantial social benefits in excess of private returns.63 The study 60 See the observations by Linda Cohen and Roger Noll cited above and in The Technology Pork Barrel, op.
|
From page 44... ...
They believe that the ATP is an "interesting experiment in whether the government can promote economic growth through an explicit technology policy."64 Combining both political and economic perspectives, they argue that "only projects with certain characteristics will enable ATP to achieve its economic goals, and those may not be the same projects that help it to achieve political support."65 Based on the information available to them in 1995-96, the authors concluded that the program at that time had "had only limited success."66 In particular, the authors stress the difficulty in identifying and measuring the social returns of ATP projects.67 The challenge of identifying and tracking the impact of social benefits has been of interest to economists at least since Alfred Marshall emphasized it in his discussion of the evolution of the modern firm.68 An analysis of spillovers produced by Adam Jaffe in 1996 distinguished several different mechanisms by which R&D generates spillovers.69 He identifies "knowledge spillovers," "market spillovers," and "network spillovers" and observes that the three tend to inter64 For further information on Yager's views, in addition to the GAO reports, see his presentation in National Research Council, The Advanced Technology Program: Challenges and Opportunities, op.
|
From page 45... ...
While recognizing the inherent complexity of this type of assessment, Jaffe observes that "the empirical evidence suggests that the average research project generates spillovers."72 He adds that to the extent the ATP targets projects with better-than-average spillover potential, its awards can generate social returns greater than would otherwise have been achieved.73 70 Ibid., p.
|
From page 46... ...
3. 75 See Rosalie Ruegg, "Taking a Step Back: An Early Results Overview of Fifty ATP Awards," in this volume, and the earlier assessment by William Long, Advanced Technology Program, op.
|
From page 47... ...
15. 83 The NIST director at that time, Ray Kammer, objected to the GAO report, arguing that "the implied argument is that the federal government should not fund research that shares the same overall goal as research funded outside of the government." Kammer argued that by that criterion federal research would be discontinued on cures for diseases such as cancer and AIDS, as well as on wireless communications, computing technologies, and manufacturing.
|
From page 48... ...
48 THE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM: ASSESSING OUTCOMES 85 The GAO noted that the 1997 focused program competitions addressed motor vehicle manufacturing technology, information infrastructure for health care, component-based software, and tissue .
|
From page 49... ...
The authors found that firms selected by the ATP were more likely to share the research findings, thus contributing to their dissemination. 90 Feldman and Kelley find that the receipt of an ATP award has a "halo effect" in that it "significantly increases the firm's success in attracting additional funds from other sources for R&D activities," Ibid., p.
|
From page 50... ...
94 The difficulty of arriving at a definitive response is not confined to the GAO reports nor the internal ATP assessments. An excellent, comprehensive survey by Paul David, Bronwyn Hall, and Andrew Toole notes, "the paucity of systematic statistical evidence documenting a direct contribution from public R&D" while also noting that "there is a significantly positive and relatively high rate of return to R&D investments at both the private and social level." Is Public R&D a Complement or a Substitute for Private R&D ?
|
From page 51... ...
In addition to recommending the abolishment of the Department of Commerce and NIST, Hudgins argues that "In the area of advanced commercial technologies, that is, the high-tech revolution of the past 15 years, the private sector already does a world-class job in developing new products and technologies. Thus, ATP is unnecessary.
|
From page 52... ...
Hi Martin Kenney, Understanding Silicon Valley, op.
|
From page 53... ...
Noll, The Technology Pork Barrel, op.
|
From page 54... ...
Government is actually placing bets on our collective future, and from the public standpoint, the magnitude of the potential social gains are sufficiently large to provide a comfortable margin for error in choosing among technologies to back." See the testimony of Professor Michael Borrus, University of California at Berkeley, before the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Subcommittee on Technology, April 10, 1997. http:// www.house.gov/science/borrus 4-lO.html.
|
From page 55... ...
Cohen and Roger G Noll, The Technology Pork Barrel, op.
|
From page 56... ...
For an overview of the ATP record, see the analysis by Rosalie Ruegg, "Taking a Step Back: An Early Results Overview of Fifty ATP Awards," in this volume. ii6 See the paper by Jeffrey Dyer and Benjamin Powell, "Perspectives on the Determinants of Success in ATP-sponsored R&D Joint Ventures: The Views of Participants," in this volume and the summary of their findings in Section B on page 60.
|
From page 57... ...
487. ii9 In Senate Report 105-235, the Advanced Technology Program was directed to arrange for a well-regarded organization with significant business and economic experience to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the ATP, analyzing how well the program has performed against the goals established in its authorizing statute, the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988.
|
From page 58... ...
The symposium brought together policy analysts, economists, Department of Commerce officials responsible for the ATP, and representatives of private industry to review the ATP's objectives, describe its selection process, and review case studies from the assessment program, as well as discuss the ATP's rationale, program strengths and weaknesses, and consider potential areas for improvement. The summary of the deliberations in Chapter IV are complemented by seven papers that describe the evolution and nature of the ATP competition process and assess, from a variety of perspectives, the impact of the ATP awards.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.