Foreign Participation in U.S. Research and Development Asset or Liability? (1996) / Chapter Skim
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Introduction
Introduction
Pages 15-28
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From page 15... ...
A relative latecomer to industrialization, the United States rose swiftly to world industrial leadership during the latter half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries by drawing heavily on technology, talent, and capital from abroad. The chemical industry, today one of the central pillars of the U.S.
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From page 16... ...
Yet, foreign direct investments in U.S. manufacturing and foreign participation in U.S.
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From page 17... ...
To date, however, no systematic effort has been made to collect comprehensive data on foreign involvement in U.S.-based R&D activities, and only a few attempts have been made to develop more detailed, qualitative assessments of various modes of foreign R&D participation and their longterm costs and benefits to U.S. economic development.3 The lack of useful data, however, is only part of the problem.
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From page 18... ...
R&D in areas other than national security have focused on prospective foreign involvement in publicly funded4 civilian R&D activities—chiefly university-based research and research conducted in federal laboratories and as part of governmentsponsored collaborative R&D initiatives. Recent federal initiatives to provide limited direct support of precommercial industrial R&D (e.g., the Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology Consortium tSEMATECHJ, the National Science Foundation's Engineering Research Center program, the Advanced Technology Program [ATP]
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From page 19... ...
Comparisons of national trends in R&D investment, patenting, scientific and engineering literature citations, high-technology production and trade,7 and productivity growth all document a rapid increase in the ability of America's trading partners above all Japan to develop, absorb, and effectively exploit new knowledge and technology worldwide (Table 1.1~. Likewise, the rapid expansion of international trade, foreign direct investment, and transnational corporate alliances during the past decade attests to the significant internationalization of industrial production and its associated advanced technical activities (Figure 1.11.
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From page 21... ...
In the process, a rapidly expanding population of U.S.-owned multinational companies greatly expanded their presence in foreign markets and innovation systems. Today, foreign markets account for a large share of the total sales and revenues of U.S.-owned companies in many it&D-intensive industries.
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From page 22... ...
(13.2) Canada 46.0 37.8b 49.0c Japan 1.0 1.1 2.4 Data not available aThe United States defines foreign-controlled firms as nationally incorporated and unincorporated business enterprises in which foreign persons have at least a 10 percent interest.
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From page 23... ...
Indeed, some of those defense spin-offs were seminal to the growth or development of major civilian industries, such as microelectronics, aerospace, computers, and telecommunications. By the 1980s, however, the rapid growth of global commercial R&D capabilities and civilian markets for advanced technology products had dwarfed federal R&D spending and procurement as contributors to the U.S.
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From page 24... ...
Under this unwritten compact, the federal government assumed primary responsibility for mobilizing scientific and technical resources for accepted public missions, such as national security, public health, and world leadership in basic research. Responsibility for developing, diffusing, and harnessing technology for national economic development fell almost exclusively to private-sector players and competitive markets.
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From page 25... ...
R&D activities of universities and federal laboratories is becoming increasingly blurred. This blurring of roles and mixing of research cultures has raised new concerns about the use of public research monies to advance the economic interests of individual companies, potential conflicts of interest for publicly subsidized researchers, and the accountability of publicly supported research institutions generally (National Institutes of Health, 1994a,b; Rose, 1993a,b; Schmidt, 1993; U.S.
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From page 26... ...
The aim of this study is to increase public understanding of the nature and economic consequences of foreign involvement in the U.S. R&D enterprise and, by so doing, to improve the quality of the debate and the policy responses that result from that dialogue.
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From page 27... ...
The U.S. government defines foreign direct investment as the ownership by a foreign person or business of 10 percent or more of the voting equity of a company located in the United States.
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From page 28... ...
Witness, for example, mounting Congressional skepticism regarding the new industrial competitiveness contributions of federal laboratories, and Congress' efforts to "zero out" funding for the Advanced Technology Program, the Technology Reinvestment Project, and the Department of Commerce's Technology Administration. See American Association for the Advancement of Science (1995)
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