Skip to main content

Currently Skimming:

Policy Implications of Japan's Growing Technological Capabilities: Framing the Issues
Pages 209-215

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 209...
... Third, while in the early postwar era the United States had special advantages in what have come to be called "strategic" industries, in recent years this has been less and less the case; however, whether this significantly disadvantages the United States is an open question. Fourth, the national institutions and policies supporting the development of technology are complex and varied, involving much more than simply "private enterprise" and "markets," and this is true in the United States as well as Japan; the question of what is appropriate and fair government involvement in technological advance and what is not does not have an easy answer.
From page 210...
... lead in "high tech" industries, was new. Before World War II the United States was scarcely a slouch in high tech, but Europeans felt no sense of inferiority here.
From page 211...
... The other side of this coin is that, in my view at least, one will not see in the foreseeable future the opening up of big gaps in technological capabilities, among the major industrial nations of the sort that one saw after World War II. It is extremely unlikely that the United States possibly could redeem those kinds of leads.
From page 212...
... More, the reason Japan is gaining ascendancy in these industries has a lot to do with the policies of the Japanese government specifically aimed to help these industries. According to this argument, if the United States does not match these policies, or otherwise protect these industries, the result will be highly detrimental to the American economy.
From page 213...
... I do not want to argue against the point that, in certain circumstances, industries where firms have considerable market power are able to pay higher wages and reap higher profits than more competitive ones, or against the argument that technological advance in certain industries yields widespread externalities. However, I proposed earlier that the erosion of market power in the American steel and automobile industries, because of import competition, probably is better regarded as having caused a redistribution of real income among Americans than having caused a transfer of real income from Americans to Japanese and other foreigners.
From page 214...
... But Europeans rejoin that government help was needed to overcome the huge head start American companies had won in large part as a spillover from military R&D, and can be justified economically both on infant industry grounds and as a policy to avoid the development of a onecompany world monopoly. And what of government support for telecommunications R&D where telecommunications is a government service?
From page 215...
... While this conference is focused on the consequences for the United States of Japan's growing technological capabilities, perhaps that question is too narrow and slanted to orient the discussion in a useful way. Let me propose that the real question is how the United States can learn to cope better with a world where technology is international, where the advanced industrial nations are basically on a par with each other in terms of access to technology, as are the firms that happen to be headquartered in different nations.


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.