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From page 1... ... Fred Bergsten, member of the committee and director of the Institute for International Economics, the conference entitled "Japan's Growing Technological Capabilities: Implications for the U.S. Economy" was held on October 23 and 24, 1991, at the National Academy of Sciences. Read the entire page →
From page 2... ... They are also strongly affected by another trend: the passing of U.S. technological preeminence and growing evidence that the United States lags Japan in terms of capabilities to commercialize civilian technology. Read the entire page →
From page 3... ... The second purpose is to examine the methods for and applications of assessments of national technological strengths and weaknesses, particularly applications to policymaking. The authors present a unanimous, unambiguous conclusion from their review of American and Japanese technological capabilities: while the United States retains leadership in software and in some other areas, Japan's technological capability across a wide spectrum of commercially significant fields is formidable and growing relative to that of the United States. Read the entire page →
From page 4... ... Miller believes that studies of Japanese technological capabilities yield diminishing returns and it is time for Americans to put knowledge about Japan to work by strengthening the links between research and the market. The second purpose of the opening chapters is to consider the methodologies for and applications of assessments of national technological strengths and weaknesses as practiced in the United States and Japan. Read the entire page →
From page 5... ... Shigetaka Seki's description of the approach to technology assessment taken by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in preparing white papers on industrial technology contrasts in some ways with the JTEC method.2 The technology assessments summarized in MITI white papers are snapshots across a range of industries and technologies rather than a series of in-depth studies like those of JTEC. Read the entire page →
From page 6... ... technological capabilities are followed by four that deal with the economic implications of Japan's growing technological capability two devoted to macroeconomic and two to microeconomic issues. In their contribution to the volume, Dale Jorgenson and Masahiro Kuroda present results of an extensive comparison of American and Japanese productivity growth in 29 industries for the period 1960-1985. Read the entire page →
From page 7... ... Part of this disparity may be due to the time periods covered. Yoshitomi includes developments up to 1988, 4John Cantwell, in another paper included in this volume, argues that the technological capabilities of a country's firms can have an impact on the trade balance and other macroeconomic indicators. Read the entire page →
From page 8... ... A closer look at Jorgenson and Kuroda's findings reveals that, while overall productivity growth between the United States and Japan converged after the first oil shock, the U.S.-Japan variance in productivity growth in particular industries has increased. For example, in the electrical machinery industry, Japanese productivity has surpassed the U.S. Read the entire page →
From page 9... ... The first is a comprehensive literature and statistical survey that lends further support to the consensus of the authors in the first section that the technological capabilities of Japanese firms are increasingly formidable. Mowery and Teece show how the commercial focus of Japan's national innovation system has a major positive impact on the ability of Japanese firms to develop and utilize technology. Read the entire page →
From page 10... ... It will be interesting to see, in the years ahead, whether Japanese firms performing R&D in the United States opt for more fundamental research or pursue the typical approach emphasis on proprietary research to spark new products and increased sales. Graham argues that even proprietary R&D performed by Japanese companies in the United States generates external and downstream benefits. Read the entire page →
From page 11... ... Since the recipients of profit income have a higher propensity to save than the recipients of wage income, consumption growth in a leading economy of a technological paradigm will tend to lag income growth, and savings will tend to exceed investment. Cantwell's second point concerns policy implications for the United States. Read the entire page →
From page 12... ... Instead, he draws the policy inference that research and development consortia that include companies from a range of industries are an effective means of constructing the "innovative infrastructure" necessary to exploit technology fusion. He argues that excluding foreign firms from these consortia would be counterproductive to national technology policy. Read the entire page →
From page 13... ... Nelson draws an important distinction between long-term convergence in the technological capabilities of the major industrialized nations and the slowdown in productivity growth experienced by the United States. These two trends are often linked but, according to Nelson, may not have a great deal to do with each other. Read the entire page →
From page 14... ... Indeed, many economists would say that superior management of the macroeconomy by the Japanese government has played the major role in sustaining a high investment rate, which has led to a fast turnover of capital stock. Other contributors postulate that a better fit between the organization of Japan's economy and an emerging technological paradigm has made a significant contribution to performance. Read the entire page →
From page 15... ... This debate is marked by disagreement over whether Japan has a responsibility to bring its market system closer to those of the United States and others, or whether the responsibility for change lies elsewhere. Sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit are concerns about the unfortunate political repercussions likely to arise if the patterns of the past (technology transfer from the United States to Japan, growing Japanese dominance in some important high technology industries, and laggardly Japanese government funding of more fundamental research) Read the entire page →
From page 16... ... To the extent that U.S. universities and industry develop mechanisms for cooperation with foreign firms that build in reciprocal access to Japanese manufacturing technologies and practices, the result should be to increase technology transfer from Japan to the United States. Read the entire page →
From page 17... ... Understanding of new developments in Japan and around the world and the ability to integrate domestic technology policy with international economic policy are other key imperatives suggested from our reading of the papers. It is clear that U.S. Read the entire page →

From page 1...

... Fred Bergsten, member of the committee and director of the Institute for International Economics, the conference entitled "Japan's Growing Technological Capabilities: Implications for the U.S. Economy" was held on October 23 and 24, 1991, at the National Academy of Sciences.

Overview Pages 1-18

Overview
Pages 1-18