Rob Atkinson

• Doctor of Philosophy
• information Technology and Innovation Foundation

While U.S. trade policy has long been contentious, until recently, the orthodox view was that it should prioritize U.S. consumer interests. But the significant decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs and output due to unbalanced trade (and weak U.S. competitiveness) has provided an opening to rethink this policy. Because of this and other factors, Presi...

Data governance and the management of global digital data flows pose immense challenges for global governance. International digital data agreements must be embedded in revisions of the global “rules based” order that emerged out of Bretton Woods in the aftermath of World War II to manage global economic issues. In that spirit, the countries that v...

For many progressives, anticorporatism is not just the means for achieving other policy goals, it is the main goal in and of itself: an economy rid of large corporations. If their movement prevails, the result will be slower growth, diminished competitiveness, and less opportunity. This article analyzes the movement and its implications on policy.

With the rise of China, the U.S. economic and technology environment has fundamentally and inexorably changed. The most important step Congress and the Biden administration can take to meet the challenge is to create a dedicated national advanced industry and technology agency.

This report first discusses why leadership in IT and digital technology is important. It then discusses where major nations or groups of nations stand vis-à-vis IT and digital technology and their strategies and successes. These include the United States, China, the EU, Japan, the Four Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong),...

Alarmists say the economy is experiencing a crisis of market concentration, with dominant players stifling competition in industry after industry. That is the pretext for a push to radically restructure antitrust policy—but newly released Census data largely contradict the claim.

This report describes the historical evolution of the U.S. national innovation system. It then describes the broad elements of the national innovation system organized around what is termed the “innovation success triangle”: the business environment, regulatory environment, and innovation environment. In addition, for each element, it provides a s...

China’s systematic “innovation mercantilism” is a threat not only to the world’s major economies—particularly to the European Union, Japan, and the United States—but also to the very soul of the global trading system. Yet while China has imposed its corrosive and harmful economic and trade policies on the world unilaterally, it would be impossible...

Just as there was a set of institutions, agreements, and principles that emerged out of Bretton Woods in the aftermath of World War II to manage global economic issues, the countries that value the role of an open, competitive, and rules-based global digital economy need to come together to enact new global rules and norms to manage a key driver of...

In today’s economy, data is to global trade what manufactured goods were in the post-War Bretton Woods system—its lifeblood. However, the datadriven economy is under increasing threat as countries impose a slew of nontariff trade barriers that limit the flow of data across borders. Some of these measures stem from privacy and security concerns, but...

Objective: The paper analyzes recent trends and dynamics that affect the relative availability, utilization, quality, and value of American broadband networks versus those in other OECD nations. Most of the literature on this subject was developed five to ten years ago, prior to the deployment of DOCSIS 3, LTE, VDSL, and the smartphone, and during...

The issue of innovation in developing nations and the role in IP in supporting it is of late of significant interest. But what is the effect of systemic disregard for IP rights on the global innovation system. Does it spur more innovation or less? Robert Atkinson will discuss how a larger share of nations are increasingly focused on winning the inn...

Countries’ use of localization barriers to trade (LBTs) — policies that seek to explicitly pressure foreign enterprises to localize economic activity in order to compete in a country’s markets — have grown dramatically. But LBTs such as forced local production or forced technology or intellectual property transfer as a condition of market access ha...

Taking the whole picture into account, this report finds that the United States has made rapid progress in broadband deployment, performance, and price, as well as adoption when measured as computer-owning households that subscribe to broadband. Considering the high cost of operating and upgrading broadband networks in a largely suburban nation, th...

The Policy Index assesses 55 countries against 84 indicators grouped across seven core innovation policy areas: 1) trade and foreign direct investment; 2) science and R&D; 3) domestic market competition; 4) intellectual property rights; 5) information technology; 6) government procurement; and 7) high-skill immigration.The Index ranks countries as...

This important book delivers a critical wake-up call: a fierce global race for innovation advantage is under way, and while other nations are making support for technology and innovation a central tenet of their economic strategies and policies, America lacks a robust innovation policy. What does this portend? Robert Atkinson and Stephen Ezell, wid...

There is considerable disagreement on optimal antitrust policy both within the United States and between the United States and some other nations and regions. These fundamental disagreements over the right approach to competition don’t stem principally from politics, rather they stem from doctrine – the overarching view of antitrust held by regulat...

Innovation has powered America’s economy, creating good jobs and a high standard of living. Yet, the U.S. share of innovation-based industries is in decline, jeopardizing our status as the world’s innovation leader. And one reason is that the United States has been unable to produce enough of its own workers with sufficient skills in science, techn...

This report builds on four earlier State New Economy Indexes published in 1999, 2002, 2007, and 2008. The purpose of the State New Economy Index is to measure the economic structure of states. Unlike some reports, which assess state economic performance or state economic policies, this report focuses more narrowly on a simple question: To what degr...

In climate change, as in all policy issues, economic philosophy has a significant influence on how people view both the problems and the solutions. For the first time, ITIF surveys four dominant schools of economic thought and analyzes how adherents approach policy options for climate change and energy policy. With climate change and major energy l...

Innovation has become the central driver of economic growth and thus a key focal point of countries’ economic development strategies as they seek to gain competitive advantage. Accordingly, countries are increasingly designing national innovation strategies that seek to coordinate their policies toward skills, scientific research, information and c...

The debate about the future of the Internet is more politically charged than ever. Internet policy issues are becoming more central. All groups involved in Internet policy share a goal of a robust Internet ecosystem but have sometimes vastly different definitions of robust and different views on how to achieve that goal. In this report we identify...

Disagreements over how to craft Internet policy have become more and more contentious and political. Beyond the technical and engineering aspects are economic questions, and the points of view of various stakeholders and participants on such network policy issues stem from differing economic philosophies. This paper postulates and describes four co...

Innovation – the improvement of existing or the creation of entirely new products, processes, services, and business or organizational models – drives long-run economic growth and quality of life improvements. As such, spurring innovation should be the centerpiece of national economic policies.To date, much of the focus of innovation policy has bee...

This article is a response to an article on revitalizing U.S. manufacturing by Greg Tassey, senior economist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It praises Tassey for his insights, describes various inaccuracies in measures of manufacturing output, and details how resistance by policy makers to support America’s technology sector...

The past decade has witnessed a rapid growth in self service that allows consumers to take on the traditional role of a service worker in the provision of a service. Self service has long existed - think of placing a call by dialing a telephone instead of using a telephone operator or pressing a button in an elevator instead of using an elevator op...

Policymakers and economic scholars around the world agree that the primary source of economic growth, competitiveness, and increases in standards of living in a globalized economy is innovation in the form of new products and services, more efficient production processes, and new business models. 1 Moreover, as oil and food prices escalate, the nee...

Seven recommendations are offered for the Obama Administration to ensure that the economy is on a robust growth path over the next decade. These recommendations are intended as first steps towards building the innovation-based public-private partnerships needed to drive economic growth and prosperity.

Innovators continue to find new ways to use information technology (IT) to make our lives better. Looking forward, IT will continue to be a critical component of solutions to many social challenges. But policymakers must create the right environment for technological progress. This article offers 10 guiding principals for creating technology policy...

In this report, researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) assess the employment impact in the United Kingdom of investments in three ICT infrastructures: broadband networks, intelligent transportation systems, and the smart power grid, that: (1) contri...

In this report, ITIF argues that supporting the deployment of faster broadband networks will be crucial to enabling next-generation Web-based applications and services that will play important roles in improving quality of life and boosting economic growth. While getting broadband service to the Americans who lack it is an important policy target,...

It has become almost a cliché to point out that the rise of advanced transportation and communication technologies have provided firms much more locational freedom and that the market for an increased share of goods and services is now international. But these and other factors have dramatically increased the pressures on nations to be globally com...

The ideal fiscal stimulus measure not only creates jobs and drives economic activity in the short run but also boosts quality of life and economic growth in the medium and long run. Support for scientific research in the stimulus package accomplishes both goals. In this report, ITIF finds that spurring an additional $20 billion investment in our na...

As Congress considers a substantial stimulus package to get the economy moving, investing in new economy digital infrastructures will provide significant opportunities not just for short-term stimulus and job creation, but also longer term economic and social benefits. In the report, "The Digital Road to Recovery: A Stimulus Plan to Create Jobs, Bo...

While the presidential race primarily focused on the economy, the Iraq war, and the rising cost of health care, President Barack Obama must now show that he is ready to set the technology policy agenda of the United States for the next four years because our national technology policy will have a large effect across all areas of national policy. Sp...

On May 5, 2009, the Silicon Flatirons Center and the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) brought together leading individuals from the telecommuications industry, academia, and public interest community to discuss the state of broadband competition policy.

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009 This presentation was part of the session : Policy Actors and Relationships This 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,...

In the midst of economic slowdowns, it's often hard to think beyond the near term. But, just as the most effective companies take advantage of slowdowns to better position themselves for subsequent periods of strong economic growth, so, too, should states. For the current slowdown, caused in large part by higher energy prices and excesses in the ho...

In the new global economy information technology (IT) is the major driver of both economic growth and improved quality of life. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in its 2007 report Digital Prosperity: Understanding the Economic Benefits of the Information Technology Revolution documented how IT, since the mid-1990s, has be...

Policymakers in the US are planning to create a national innovation foundation (NIF) on the basis of new federal programs that have been implemented in the country to promote innovation. Innovation has been included in the country's policy agenda under the America COMPETES Act, which has converted into law in 2007. The act emphasizes on increased f...

A report examining broadband promotion policies in 9 nations finds that while we should not look to other nations for silver bullets or assume that practices in one nation will automatically work in another, U.S. policymakers can and should learn from broadband best practices in other nations. Emulating the right policies here will enable the U.S....

The proposals to stimulate US competitiveness are insufficient to meet the challenges posed by a rapidly evolving global economy and the aggressive policies of other nations. The government must work harder to ensure that national economic development strategies around the world are based on positive sum strategies such as investing more in science...

The United States leads the world in the development, production, and use of information technology (IT). Because IT is not only the major driver of economic growth but also a key source of high-paying jobs in sectors like semiconductors, hardware, services, and software, most countries have adopted policies to win the international competition for...

It's hard to pick up a business or technology magazine without reading how the United States is falling behind in broadband telecommunications. After the requisite bemoaning of our low and falling rank, these articles usually close with a vague and ill-defined plea for policy makers to do more to accelerate broadband deployment and take-up. What is...

There have been surprisingly few attempts to catalogue what is known about the economic impact of information and communications technology (IT). In a new report, ITIF does just that, examining the impact of IT in five key areas: 1) productivity; 2) employment; 3) more efficient markets; 4) higher quality goods and services; and 5) innovation and n...

The 2007 State New Economy Index, released by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), is a state-by-state analysis of how state economies are transforming from an old industrial economic model based on smokestack chasing in which economic development success is measured by the number of...

The U.S. economy faces a new and formidable competitiveness challenge. Not only has the emergence of a global economy led to the creation of robust new economic competitors, but within the last decade many nations, including most of Southeast Asia and Europe, have made innovation-led economic development a centerpiece of their national economic str...

The economic changes going on today are part and parcel of a broader and fundamental transition to a new economy that brings new opportunities and new challenges. As such it would be a mistake for economic development officials to dismiss the New Economy as some passing fad dreamed up by over-imaginative journalists. Rather, the New Economy is real...

ITIF President Rob Atkinson and University of Colorado Professor of Law and Telecommunications Phil Weiser argue that the current state of the network neutrality debate denies the reasonable concerns articulated by each side and obscures the contours of a sensible solution. They outline those concerns, as well as the claims made by both sides that...

Throughout American history, periodic cycles of economic change have fundamentally reordered the way we work, the organization of business and markets, the role of government, and even the nature of politics. If we are to control our future, we must understand this process of change. These economic transformations are powered by the emergence of...

Most observers argue that, in comparison with other advanced industrial nations, the U.S. has failed to develop a coherent and effective set of policies for industrial innovation. In contrast, in the 1980s, U.S. states forged ahead of the federal government in the development of technology policies. Yet, while some states have found the wherewithal...

Government regulation to protect health, safety, and the environment has for the past several years been indicted for the additional costs it has imposed on industry. Studies have documented that regulation can dramatically change the costs of production and alter the competitive structure within an industry. A close look at the U.S. automobile ind...

Fundamental structural changes in technology, markets, and organizations are redrawing our nation's economic map and leaving many rural areas behind. Yet our de-facto federal rural policy—providing massive subsidies to a shrinking number of farmers— does little to help develop competitive rural economies or boost opportunity for rural residents. Th...

1 ITIF is a nonprofit, non-partisan public policy think tank committed to articulating and advancing a pro-productivity, pro-innovation and pro-technology public policy agenda internationally, in Washington and in the states. Through its research, policy proposals, and commentary, ITIF is working to advance and support public policies that boost in...