In a new report, ITIF examines the international leaders in ITS and suggests steps the United States should take to close the gap.

In this webmemo ITIF senior analyst Daniel Castro and research analyst Scott Andes discuss Fareed Zakaria’s book The Post-American World and dispute his conclusions that the United States has little to worry about in terms of international competition and innovation.

In the latest issue of Internet Computing, ITIF discusses the ongoing debate on globalization as to whether the world is flat, spiky, or “post-American.” ITIF puts these competing viewpoints in perspective and presents the key lessons policymakers should learn from these debates.

The global economic downturn has sharpened the debate over whether the current
structure of globalization is sustainable. But this debate existed long before the crisis, and it will continue unless we take serious steps now to create a new kind of globalization that shifts the core economic policies of nations from mercantilist, export-led strategies to innovation-based, domestic-growth strategies.

In a recently published book by the Policy Network, Social Justice in the Global Age, ITIF President Rob Atkinson shows how the ICT revolution, not globalization, is at the heart of the social and economic transformations of the last quarter-century.

In a two part series of articles in The Globalist online magazine, Rob Atkinson describes how, with the balance of trade shifting from multinational corporations to large emerging markets — such as China and India — some nations have turned to unfair practices to gain a trade advantage.

In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on May 22nd, 2008, ITIF President Rob Atkinson described the growing array of mercantilist trade policies that nations have enacted to unfairly disadvantage foreign – including U.S. – technology products. To combat these practices, Atkinson expressed support for the Trade Enforcement Act of 2007 currently under consideration, and argued further for the enactment of a 25 percent tax credit for corporate expenditures related to bringing WTO cases to fight mercantilist practices.

In a recent Huffington Post blog posting, Rob Atkinson argues argues that, instead of embracing growth policies to raise productivity in all the sectors of its economy, China, like many developing nations, has erected neo-mercantilist policies designed to favor a few select export sectors. Not only are these trade practices unfair, but they are not the best way to raise living standards – in China and elsewhere. It’s time to develop a new global consensus that domestic productivity growth should be the key focus of economic policy in every nation.

After a long period over which Europe was catching up to the United States in productivity, this trend has reversed. Lower levels of investment in information and communications technology (ICT) and less effective use of existing ICT explain a significant share of the lower rates of productivity growth in the European Union over the last decade when compared to the United States. The report argues that regaining robust productivity growth will be critical for EU nations over the next several decades as they struggle with a myriad of challenges, including an aging population.

Professor Ken Kraemer, the co-author of a recent study of IT value chains, discussed the nature of the global supply chain for the iPod and notebook computer: where value is created, what each nation specializes in, and how much value each captures. Kraemer and ITIF President Rob Atkinson then discussed what kinds of public policies the United States needs to adopt to ensure that we stay competitive and capture a larger share of the value chain.

A discussion of the importance of four free trade agreements currently under consideration, featuring Jamie Estrada, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Manufacturing, U.S. Department of Commerce; Marc Lautenbach, Americas General Manager, IBM Corporation; and John Zogby, pollster president of Zogby International.

ITIF comments on the Court’s recent decision against Microsoft.

Many nations use a host of unfair and protectionist policies to systematically disadvantage foreign, including U.S., technology companies in global competition. A new report documents the myriad of unfair trade practices and outlines specific steps Congress and the Administration can take to combat this new wave of technology protectionism.

In the last few years many have argued that the middle class has not been receiving its fair share of productivity income growth. As a result, the focus of many, particularly those on the left, has shifted from promoting productivity growth to redistribution as a way to raise living standards for this group of Americans. A new ITIF paper examines carefully the trends over the last 25 years in income growth and finds that, contrary to the conventional explanation embraced by many on the left, the historical link between productivity growth and wage growth is not broken and it would be a grave mistake for our future if our nation gave up on growth and the policies that can spur it.

In a coauthored report with The Brookings Institution, Robert Atkinson and Howard Wial analyze the projected impact of service sector offshoring on U.S. metropolitan economies. While the report finds that the impacts of offshoring in most metropolitan areas over the next decade are likely to be modest, it forecasts higher than average job losses in twenty-eight U.S. metropolitan areas between 2004 and 2015. To address the impacts, the paper urges federal, state, and local leaders to pursue together policies that boost productivity and innovation, assist workers who are harmed by offshoring, and modernize approaches to economic and workforce development.

New report by George Mason University Professor David Hart benchmarking flows of highly-skilled workers to the United States against similar flows to seven other high-income countries. The report compares how national immigration policies foster or constrict these flows, and lays out several broad policy recommendations that the United States should consider to ensure that we not only compete effectively for talent in the short-term, but also lead the world toward a global system for developing and using talent that is beneficial for everyone over the long-term.

In a recent article in Foreign Affairs entitled "Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution," noted economist Alan Blinder presented a provocative and disturbing thesis: the offshoring of service sector jobs represents a "third industrial revolution" likely to lead to one of every three American jobs being shipped overseas. In this paper, ITIF President Rob Atkinson shows how Blinder's projections are vastly exaggerated.