Re: Systems of innovation

[Peter Dorman <dormanp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There are definitely elements of this.  I think there is a perception in
Washington that US-based firms have a durable technological advantage in
both financial and nonfinancial services, and that any measure that
increases their scope and market access is good national economic policy.
This would go against what I said back in '98.  It's too soon to say for
sure, but my hunch is that no such advantage can be durable any more.  Also,
one of the questions people are asking post-Enron is to what extent the
apparent advantages of US corp's was an artifact of devious accounting
practices.

Peter

bantam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> G'day Peter,
>
> You write:
>
> > Right.  I argued in "Actually Existing Globalization" (published in a
> > collection a
> > few years ago) that industrial policy is ultimately understandable
> > only as
> > technology policy, but that the era of national technology (or
> > innovation) systems
> > is largely over.  At the time I reviewed some of the literature pro
> > and con; I
> > think there are some references in my article.  I'll be glad to send
> > an electronic
> > copy to anyone interested.
> >
> > Peter
> >
>
> I've not seen the paper (and I'd really like to ... ), but I'd argue the
> US has exhibited many signs of an almost mercantilist corporatist policy
> approach to optimising intial advantage in IT - pushing TRIPs into the
> Uruguay Round, allowing anti-competitive mergers and such to ensure
> world-beating economies of scope and scale, pressuring the rest of the
> world into abandoning public telecommunications backbones - in fact -
> policy timing, from the AT&T transformation, to fighting off Japanese
> HDTV standards, to the shift of the public/private internet debate in
> the early nineties, to letting the money-rich but opportunity-poor
> BabyBells off the leash in '96, to allowing media monoliths to
> consolidate across media in '02 - well, it all looks like a technology
> policy of sorts - perhaps at a structural (diffusion and control) rather
> than technical (invention and innovation) level (the DoD drove a lot of
> the latter before the end of the space race and Vietnam War occasioned a
> need for civvie market opportunities, in the context of the post '73 dip
> in national competitiveness and national accounts all 'round), but
> arguably a technology policy nevertheless.
>
> Or not?
>
> Cheers,
> Rob.