State of Metropolitan America: On the Front Lines of Demographic Transformation

Examines 2000-09 demographic and economic trends and highlights five new realities: growth and outward expansion, population diversification, aging, uneven higher educational attainment, and income polarization. Analyzes national and regional challenges

Full-Utilization Learning Lean

This paper reviews trends in component-manufacturing employment, wages, and productivity in union and nonunion shops and shows why a sharp increase in productivity growth, especially in union shops, is necessary if a large number of high-wage jobs are to be preserved. It also explains international and local unions' varied strategies that attempt to preserve jobs and/or raise productivity. Drawing on case study research on production processes in component manufacturing, the paper then argues for a model of industrial production, "full-utilization learning lean," that has the potential to raise productivity and preserve a large number of high-wage manufacturing jobs. This model combines lean production, continuous learning and substantive participation by production workers, and high levels of capacity utilization. The paper suggests public policies and union strategies that can spread this model

The Changing Industrial Composition of Manufacturing-Based Regions, 1980-2005

The United States lost 4.5 million manufacturing jobs, about 24 percent of its manufacturing base, between 1980 and 2005. This loss, its causes, and its consequences for displaced workers and the nation as a whole, have been extensively studied and debated. Yet researchers have paid little attention to the kinds of jobs that have replaced the lost manufacturing jobs in manufacturing-based metropolitan areas that lost manufacturing jobs. These metropolitan areas, located primarily in the Great Lakes region, the Northeast, and the upper South, are the places in which the impacts of manufacturing job loss on the regional economy were, and generally still are, of greatest public concern. Policymakers in these regions need to understand how the industrial structures of their regional economies have changed if they are to craft effective industry-level policies to rebuild those economies. Such policies may be designed either to accommodate the changes that have occurred or to alter the growth pattern of the regional economy

The transition from secondary to primary employment--jobs and workers in ethnic neighborhood labor markets

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1988.Bibliography: v.2, leaves 430-439.by Howard J. Wial.Ph.D

A Theoretical and Institutional Assessment of U.S. Innovation Policy

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009This presentation was part of the session : Policy Actors and RelationshipsThis paper assesses the structure and functioning of the U.S. federal government's innovation policy, focusing on those programs that are designed to promote commercial innovation. Using economic and political theory, institutional analysis, program data, and comparisons with innovation policies of U.S. states and other nations, the paper identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the current federal approach to innovation. The paper distinguishes between the inputs to innovation (such as the science and engineering workforce, funding for basic research, and the patent system) and the organization of those inputs to produce commercial innovation. Since World War II federal innovation policy has emphasized the former and, although there is need for improvement, created effective policies to develop the inputs to innovation. For much of the postwar period the U.S. left the organization of innovative inputs to firms and the market. During the last two decades, however, this system has not worked as well as it did previously. In the face of growing short-term competitive pressures, large firms perform less R&D than they did previously, other institutions (such as venture capital) have also shifted away from funding risky innovative activity, and industry-university R&D partnerships are subject to coordination failures that reduce their effectiveness as substitutes for the R&D that large firms previously performed internally. In addition, market forces per se cannot efficiently allocate resources to the organization of innovation because of well-known positive externalities from innovative activity. As a result of the shift away from large firms and toward the market as an organizer of innovation, a federal policy that is almost entirely devoted to increasing the supply of inputs to innovation is no longer adequate. The paper identifies major weaknesses in federal innovation-promotion programs. Those programs operate in an ad hoc manner rather than as part of an overall federal effort to promote innovation. Although a number of federal programs help companies become more innovative or productive (notably the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program, Technology Innovation Program, Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development Program, and the commercialization-related programs of the National Science Foundation), there is no federally funded organization whose sole mission is to spur innovation. At best, federal programs treat innovation as a byproduct of other goals or deal with limited aspects of the problem, such as university technology transfer or performance improvement in manufacturing. Furthermore, most federal innovation-related programs are designed to help individual firms, not to promote innovation across firms as well as within them. The federal government invests little compared to other nations in innovation-promotion activities, and those programs that focus most directly on such efforts have seen their budgets decline or grow more slowly than the economy overall. Federal innovation efforts are focused on larger firms and a few major research universities and less on the process of commercialization, which requires public and private entities of all sizes. Federal programs give little attention to innovation in services, despite the fact that services account for the majority of U.S. employment and output. Finally, most federal programs do not coordinate or collaborate with innovation-policy efforts by state or local governments or regional organizations. These weaknesses of federal innovation policy contrast sharply with the strengths of state and local innovation policies and of other nations' innovation policies. Since the 1980s, when the U.S. all states and many local governments and metropolitan business alliances have established technology-based economic development programs. These programs remedy some of the defects of federal policy but, because they are subject to positive externalities and political failures, do not fully make up for those defects. Many other economically advanced nations, from Finland to Britain to Japan, have begun to establish national-level government or public-private programs whose sole purpose is to work cooperatively with business to promote commercial innovation. These programs do not conduct a centralized industrial policy in the sense of favoring specific activities for private investment, but instead help firms identify and overcome barriers to innovation. The paper concludes that the federal government should address the shortcomings of its current innovation policy by creating a National Innovation Foundation, as federally funded organization that would adapt the features of other countries' innovation-promotion agencies to the American political landscape

Exploring Regional Economic Resilience

Although the literature on regional macroeconomics continues to emphasize the analysis of economic growth, the concept of economic resilience is of increasing interest to policymakers. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 focused attention on the ability of regional economies to respond to human-made and natural disasters (Chernick 2005, Liu and Plyer 2007). The steep losses of U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2000, especially in the Great Lakes Region, have prompted a great deal of concern about how regional economies experiencing those losses can rebound (Wial and Friedhoff 2005, Wial 2007, McGahey and Vey 2008).Despite the growing importance of the idea of economic resilience, the concept has not been carefully defined or measured. Drawing on implicit definitions used in the limited literature on economic resilience and on more explicit treatments of the concept in the ecological literature, this paper begins by outlining some possible meanings of regional economic resilience. Using these definitions, it then describes in more detail a quantitative and qualitative research methodology that can be used to operationalize the concept and assess the determinants of regional economic resilience

Exploring Regional Economic Resilience

Although the literature on regional macroeconomics continues to emphasize the analysis of economic growth, the concept of economic resilience is of increasing interest to policymakers. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 focused attention on the ability of regional economies to respond to human-made and natural disasters (Chernick 2005, Liu and Plyer 2007). The steep losses of U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2000, especially in the Great Lakes Region, have prompted a great deal of concern about how regional economies experiencing those losses can rebound (Wial and Friedhoff 2005, Wial 2007, McGahey and Vey 2008).Despite the growing importance of the idea of economic resilience, the concept has not been carefully defined or measured. Drawing on implicit definitions used in the limited literature on economic resilience and on more explicit treatments of the concept in the ecological literature, this paper begins by outlining some possible meanings of regional economic resilience. Using these definitions, it then describes in more detail a quantitative and qualitative research methodology that can be used to operationalize the concept and assess the determinants of regional economic resilience