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What Future for Jobs and Manufacturing

November 16, 2012 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm

IRLE hosted an invitation-only conference that focused on the many aspects of manufacturing employment both within the United States and abroad. The event was co-sponsored by the Global Metropolitan Studies Center.

Conference Summary (PDF)

  • Program

    The State of Manufacturing (video)

    Morning Session — [Chair: Michael Reich, UC Berkeley]
    Gerhard Bosch, Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation, Germany
    David Dornfeld, UC Berkeley
    Rob Scott, Economic Policy Institute
    Steve Vogel, Political Science, UC Berkeley

    What Role for Manufacturing in Restoring Full Employment? (video)

    Keynote Speaker Richard Freeman (Harvard)

    Manufacturing, Services and Job Creation

    Early Afternoon Session — [Chair: Ashok Bardhan, UC Berkeley]
    Gordon Hanson, Economics, UC San Diego
    Harry Holzer, Public Policy Institute, Georgetown
    Susan Houseman, Economist, W.E. Upjohn Institute
    Enrico Moretti, Economics, UC Berkeley

    Innovation & Manufacturing (video)

    Late Afternoon Session — [Chair: Clair Brown, UC Berkeley]
    Suzanne Berger, Political Science, MIT
    Fred Block, Sociology, UC Davis
    Stephen Ezell, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, W.D.C.
    Tim Sturgeon, Industrial Performance Center, MIT

    What Hope for Industrial Policy? (video)

    Evening Session — [Chair: Richard Walker, UC Berkeley]
    David Card, Economics, UC Berkeley
    Ralph Gomory, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
    Thea Lee, Economist, AFL-CIO

  • Participants

    Ashok Bardhan, UC Berkeley
    Suzanne Berger, Political Science, MIT
    Fred Block, Sociology, UC Davis
    Gerhard Bosch, Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation, Germany
    Clair Brown, UC Berkeley
    David Card, Economics, UC Berkeley
    David Dornfeld, UC Berkeley
    Stephen Ezell, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, W.D.C.
    Richard Freeman, Harvard
    Ralph Gomory, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
    Gordon Hanson, Economics, UC San Diego
    Harry Holzer, Public Policy Institute, Georgetown
    Susan Houseman, Economist, W.E. Upjohn Institute
    Thea Lee, Economist, AFL-CIO
    Enrico Moretti, Economics, UC Berkeley
    Michael Reich, UC Berkeley
    Rob Scott, Economic Policy Institute
    Tim Sturgeon, Industrial Performance Center, MIT
    Steve Vogel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
    Richard Walker, UC Berkeley

  • Abstracts & Materials

    Morning Session — The State of Manufacturing

    Gerhard Bosch, Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation, Germany
    Gerhard Bosch (University Duisburg-Essen) is Director of the Institute for Work, Skills and Training (Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation) and full Professor of Sociology. He is an economics and sociology graduate from the university of Cologne. His fields of research are: International Comparison of Employment, Training, Industrial Relations and Welfare Systems, Work Organization, Working Time and Employment Policy.

    Abstract
    Ten years ago Germany was regarded as the “sick man” in Europe. Now the “overhauled” German economy is seen as the engine in Europe. Especially the strong manufacturing industry wit its high export surplus is remarkable competitive. The main reasons for the recovery of the German manufacturing industry are its specialization on quality products in the upper price segments, its high investments in R&D and training, the fast diffusion of innovations across the economy including SME’s, world-wide sourcing, the still high share of long term planning companies, and the high functional and working-time flexibility. In the financial crisis work-sharing was used as a means of helping to save the country’s industrial fabric in an exceptional situation Before the introduction of the Euro the German export surpluses were regularly rebalanced by a revaluation of the DM. Contrary to the other Euro countries German real wages are stagnating since 2000 which had the effect of an internal devaluation within the Euro-Zone. The German wage restraint contributed to the present Euro crisis. Since not all countries can have export surpluses the German model cannot be copied.

    » Bosch Presentation – The state of manufacturing – The case of Germany PPT
    » 2007 Report On the Technological Performance of Germany
    PDF
    » European Employment Models in Flux PDF
    » The German Labour Market After the Financial Crisis PDF

    David Dornfeld, Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley
    David Dornfeld received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976 in the area of Production Engineering. His Ph.D. thesis concerned the study of the fundamentals of the mechanical pulping process (abrasive machining). He joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley in the Mechanical Engineering Department in 1977 and is presently Professor of Manufacturing Engineering. Since July 1, 1999 he holds the first Will C. Hall Family Chair in Engineering. He has published over 400 papers in manufacturing engineering, authored two research monographs, contributed chapters to several books and has seven patents based on his research work. He currently serves as the Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department.

    Abstract
    Manufacturing continues to offer a means to drive innovation and enable businesses. Advanced manufacturing technology, following product design, enables quality, productivity, flexibility and, now sustainability. An assessment of where the US fits into the world of manufacturing and some ideas for opportunities to leverage manufacturing for continued growth and sustainability are discussed.

    Michael Reich, Economics, UC Berkeley
    Michael Reich is Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard. His research publications cover numerous areas of labor economics and political economy, including the economics of racial inequality, the analysis of labor market segmentation, historical stages in U.S. labor markets and social structures of accumulation, high performance workplaces, union-management cooperation and Japanese labor-management systems.

    His publications include 14 books and monographs, including Labor Market Segmentation and Labor Mobility, 2009, Labor in the Era of Globalization, co-edited with Clair Brown and Barry Eichengreen, 2010, and Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises, co-edited with Terence McDonough and David Kotz, 2010. He has also published over 100 papers, including “Minimum Wages Across State Borders,” with Arindrajit Dube and William Lester, Review of Economics and Statistics, 2010, “Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment?”with Sylvia Allegretto and Arindrajit Dube, Industrial Relations, 2011 and “High Unemployment after the Great Recession: Why? What Can We Do?” Estudios de Economia Aplicada, 2012.

    Rob Scott, Economic Policy Institute
    Dr. Scott joined the Economic Policy Institute as an international economist in 1996. Before that, he was an assistant professor with the College of Business and Management of the University of Maryland at College Park. His areas of research include international economics and trade agreements and their impacts on working people in the U.S. and other countries, the economic impacts of foreign investment, and the macroeconomic effects of trade and capital flows. His research has been published in The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, The International Review of Applied Economics, and The Stanford Law and Policy Review, and he has written editorial pieces for The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, USA Today, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Times, and other newspapers.

    Abstract
    EPI, November 16, 2012

    1. U.S. lost 6.1 million manufacturing jobs between March 1998 and January 2010, the nadir for manufacturing employment in the great recession (Figure A). Over the past 21 months, 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been recovered due to the recovery of net demand domestic for manufactured products. The great bulk of the jobs lost (4 million of the net decline of 5.6 million) disappeared between March 1998 and December 2007, the last business cycle peak.
    2. Despite widespread claims to the contrary, productivity growth was responsible only a small share of the manufacturing jobs lost since 1998. The U.S. maintained roughly stable manufacturing employment between 1970 and 1998 despite high manufacturing productivity growth (Figure A). Rapidly growing demand for domestic manufactured goods offset the effects of rapid productivity growth in that period. Between 1990 and 2000, labor productivity growth in manufacturing averaged 4.1% per year, but manufacturing value added (VA) grew 4.2% per year (Figure B), and employment was roughly constant. Manufacturing productivity growth declined slightly after 2000, but the growth of real VA in manufacturing (demand for domestically manufactured products) fell dramatically to only 1.7% per year from 2000 to 2011.
    3. The U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods increased dramatically, especially after 1998 (the year after the Asian financial crisis), when U.S. manufacturing employment reached its last peak. The manufacturing trade deficit reach a peak of $559 billion (4.2% of GDP) in 2006, declined sharply in the recession, and increased again, to $449 billion (3.0% of GDP) in 2011. The growth of net manufactured imports reduced demand for domestic manufactures over the past two decades. The growth of the trade deficit in manufactured goods since 2009, in particular, shows that trade has been a net drag on the manufacturing sector during the recovery.
    4. The growth in the trade deficit over the past two decades is responsible for the vast bulk of all manufacturing jobs displaced in that period. Between 2001 and 2011 alone, the growth of the trade deficit with China was responsible for the loss of 2.7 million U.S. jobs, and 2.1 million of those jobs (76.9%) were in manufacturing. Also, U.S. and foreign multinational companies are responsible for the vast bulk of the overall U.S. goods trade deficit (78% in 2009).
    5. Conversely, elimination of the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods could recover most or all of the lost market share and employment in U.S. manufacturing. Between 2000 and 2011, as the growth of real VA in manufacturing slowed, the manufacturing share of U.S. GDP fell to 12.6% ($1.7 trillion), (black line, Figure D). If manufacturing VA had grown at 4.2% per year, as it did between 1990 and 2000, rather than the 1.7% rate experienced since then, manufacturing value added would have reached 16.5% of GDP ($2.2 trillion) in 2011 (red line in Figure D). This would create millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs, stimulating the economy and helping to end the current jobless recovery. Eliminating the trade deficit (the green line in Figure D) would eliminate nearly three-fourths of this “VA gap” in 2011. As the U.S. and global economies recover, the potential demand for U.S. manufactured goods will grow, further shrinking or eliminating the U.S. VA and manufacturing employment gaps. Eliminating global currency manipulation is the most important policy needed to reduce U.S. and global trade imbalances. The shortage of demand for domestic manufactures is the most important barrier to the recovery of U.S. manufacturing output and employment. Greatly enhance U.S. workforce and industrial policies are also needed to help rebuild U.S. manufacturing capacity and output.

    » Scott Presentation – The State of U.S. Manufacturing PDF
    » The China Toll

    » The Globalization of Capital: The Rise of the Multinational PPT
    » The Importance of Manufacturing

    Steve Vogel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
    Steven K. Vogel is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in the political economy of the advanced industrialized nations, especially Japan. He is the author of Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism (Cornell, 2006) and co-editor (with Naazneen Barma) of The Political Economy Reader: Markets as Institutions (Routledge, 2007). His earlier book, Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries (Cornell University Press, 1996), won the 1998 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. He has also edited a volume entitled U.S.-Japan Relations in a Changing World (Brookings Institution Press, 2002). He has written extensively on comparative political economy and Japanese politics, industrial policy, trade and defense policy. He has worked as a reporter for the Japan Times in Tokyo and as a freelance journalist in France. He has taught previously at the University of California, Irvine and Harvard University. He has a B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

    Abstract
    Japan has not only suffered from dismal macroeconomic performance over the past two decades, but it has lost its edge in areas of its greatest competitive strength, including some manufacturing sectors. Meanwhile, it has failed to challenge the global leaders in areas of weakness, such as software and services. Many Japanese firms lag their competitors by standard measures of industrial performance, such as growth, profits, and productivity. Japanese corporations continue to move manufacturing and other core functions abroad, while foreign companies are not attracted to Japan as a location for production.

    So what went wrong? This presentation will review Japan’s performance in manufacturing sectors, with particular attention to information technology hardware, and offer some possible explanations for Japan’s competitive challenges. For example, recent developments in the global economy – including the decomposition of production and the services transformation – have undermined Japan’s institutional strengths and exacerbated its weaknesses. Yet that only begs another question: Why have the Japanese government and corporations failed to adapt better to these challenges? I contend that they have favored incremental reforms designed to reinforce valued institutions rather than to generate new sources of competitive strength. Japan also confronts more fundamental long-term problems: an erosion in the confidence and capacity of the government bureaucracy, a relative decline in education and training standards, and a lag in international engagement.

    » Japan’s Information Technology Challenge PDF
    » Summary of the White Paper on Manufacturing Industries PDF
    » Japan’s Manufacturing Industry PDF

     

    Keynote Speaker — What Role for Manufacturing in Restoring Full Employment?

    Richard Freeman, Harvard
    Richard B. Freeman holds the Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University and is currently serving as Faculty co-Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School. He directs the Science and Engineering Workforce Project at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is Senior Research Fellow in Labour Markets at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance. Freeman received the Mincer Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Society of Labor Economics in 2006. In 2007 he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics. In 2011 he was appointed Frances Perkins Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Professor Freeman is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science.

     

    Early Afternoon Session — Manufacturing, Services and Job Creation

    Ashok Bardhan, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
    Ashok Bardhan is Senior Research Associate at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. He has an MS (Physics/Mathematics, Russia), an M.Phil (International Relations, India), and a Ph.D. (Economics, Berkeley). He is co-author of the book, “Globalization and a High-Tech Economy: California, US and Beyond”, and co-editor of two books “Global Housing Markets: Crises, Policies and Institutions,”, and the forthcoming “The Oxford Handbook of Global Employment and Offshoring”. His research includes papers on housing and the financial crisis; on trade and technology linkages between US, China and India; on management issues of globalized innovation; on global financial integration and real estate, and on the impact of offshoring on jobs and firms.

    Gordon Hanson, Economics, UC San Diego
    Professor Hanson holds the Pacific Economic Cooperation Chair in International Economic Relations at UC San Diego, where he is director of the Center on Emerging and Pacific Economies and has faculty positions in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the Department of Economics. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a co-editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics. Professor Hanson specializes in the economics of international trade, international migration, and foreign direct investment. His current research examines the immigration of highly skilled labor in the United States, the impact of imports from China on the US labor market, and the long-run determinants of comparative advantage. Professor Hanson obtained his PhD in economics from MIT in 1992.

    Abstract
    The last two decades have brought a transformation of the global economy. Led by China and India, emerging economies have gone from being marginal players in global trade to being the engines of global growth. This transformation has brought with it a major shift in global relative prices. Because of China’s overwhelming specialization in manufacturing, growth of emerging economies has produced an increase in net demand for raw materials, raising their relative price, and an increase in the net supply of manufactures, lowering their relative price. China’s role in global demand and supply cannot be overstated. Between 1990 and 2008, China accounted for three quarters of worldwide growth in manufacturing value added by low and middle income countries.

    For US manufacturing, China’s surge has meant significantly greater competition. Further, because of the US trade deficit and China’s trade surplus, China’s growth has meant a major increase in the supply of foreign manufactured goods entering the US economy without a corresponding increase in the demand for US goods. In recent work with David Autor and David Dorn, I analyze the effect of rising Chinese import competition on local U.S. labor markets. Prior to China’s emergence, U.S. regional economies differed markedly in their specialization in manufacturing overall and by industry within manufacturing. Consequently, some U.S. regions were highly exposed to import competition and others were not. Over the period 1991 to 2007, we find that U.S. local labor markets more subject to import competition from China experienced large increases in unemployment and labor-force non-participation and larger reductions in average wages. Increasing import competition from China can account for one-quarter of the contemporaneous aggregate decline in U.S. manufacturing employment. Surprisingly, local labor markets do not appear to adjust to increased trade through the out-migration of labor. What does play an important role in adjustment is uptake of government benefits. Transfer payments for unemployment, disability, retirement, and healthcare all rise sharply in labor markets more exposed to trade with China. Trade adjustment assistance, the one government program specifically designed to help U.S. workers hurt by import competition, plays a minimal role in how regions adjust to foreign competition.

    » The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States PDF
    » The Rise of Middle Kingdoms: Emerging Economies in Global Trade PDF

    Harry Holzer, Public Policy Institute, Georgetown
    Harry J. Holzer is a Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Research in Washington DC. He is a former Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Labor and a former Professor of Economics at Michigan State University. He received his A.B. from Harvard in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard in 1983. He is a Senior Affiliate of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan and a Research Affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, an Affiliated Scholar with the Urban Institute, and a member of the editorial board at the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Holzer has authored or edited 11 books and several dozen journal articles, mostly on disadvantaged American workers and their employers.

    Abstract

    1. Declining employment in manufacturing over time has reduced the employment of less-skilled workers much more than those with some post-secondary education and/or technical skills, like machinists or engineers.
    2. Manufacturing today (particularly durable goods) accounts for a relatively small percentage of the “good jobs” generated in the U.S. labor market, especially for unskilled workers, but these are worth preserving and supporting.
    3. To create both good jobs and good (i.e., highly skilled) workers, in manufacturing and elsewhere, the U.S. needs to create an education and workforce systems that is more effective and more responsive to the needs of employers in key sectors and to labor demand more generally.
    4. In addition to education and workforce policies, those that incent and assist employers in the creation of “good jobs” and high-performance workplaces could be useful as well.

    » Testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress PDF
    » A Call for ‘Good Jobs’ AND ‘Good Workers’

    Susan Houseman, Economist, W.E. Upjohn Institute
    Houseman chairs the Technical Advisory Committee to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Prior to coming to the Upjohn Institute, Houseman was on the faculty at the University of Maryland, School of Public Affairs and was a Visiting Scholar at The Brookings Institution. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

    Abstract
    In recent decades US manufacturing output growth has been robust, outpacing economy-wide growth except during recessions. This fact has led many policymakers and analysts to conclude that US manufacturing is strong and employment losses–5.5 million since 2000, representing a third of its employment base–largely reflect productivity growth from automation and, as in agriculture, are inevitable. These commonly-cited manufacturing statistics are widely misinterpreted, however. The rapid output and productivity growth of the manufacturing sector is largely attributable to one small industry: computers and electronic products. For most of manufacturing, output growth has been weak and productivity growth modest. In addition, biases stemming from extensive offshoring have led to a significant overstatement of key manufacturing output and productivity statistics.

    While the conventional wisdom that US manufacturing jobs are rapidly disappearing owing to productivity growth is deeply flawed, there are reasons to be skeptical that manufacturing can be a major source of high-paying, stable employment for low-educated workers in the future. US manufacturing wages levels remain high relative to those in emerging economies, a fact that has contributed to offshoring and job loss in the sector. And wages, benefits, and job security of those jobs remaining in the United States are eroding. Not only have wages within the manufacturing sector been stagnant but a growing share of manufacturing work is performed by contract labor, which falls outside the formal manufacturing sector and is characterized by weak job security and few benefits.

    » The Debate over the State of U.S. Manufacturing: How the Computer Industry Affects the
    Numbers and Perceptions
    PDF
    » Offshoring Bias in U.S. Manufacturing
    « Manufacturers’ Outsourcing to Staffing Services

    Enrico Moretti, Economics, UC Berkeley
    Enrico Moretti is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley where he holds the Michael Peevey and Donald Vial Career Development Chair in Labor Economics. He is the Director of the Infrastructure and Urbanization Program at the International Growth Centre (London School of Economics and Oxford University). He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge), and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London) and at the Institute for the Study of Labor (Bonn). His research interests include Labor Economics, Urban Economics and Applied Econometrics.

    Abstract
    I will discuss the structural forces that have caused the decline in manufacturing employment over the last 30 years, and how they may change in the coming years.

    » The New Geography of Jobs

     

    Late Afternoon Session — Innovation & Manufacturing

    Suzanne Berger, Political Science, MIT
    Suzanne Berger is Raphael Dorman-Helen Starbuck Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Massachusetts. She co-chairs the MIT Production in the Innovation Economy Commission—a large research project bringing MIT engineers, social scientists, and management experts together to analyze the role of manufacturing in advanced economies. She is the author of many books and articles—from one on French peasants (Peasants Against Politics) to work on the 1989 Made in America project at MIT to a major study of globalization, outsourcing, and offshoring: How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make It in Today’s Global Economy (2006). She wrote Made By Hong Kong and Global Taiwan (with Richard K. Lester) and a study of globalization before World War I: Notre Première Mondialisation.

    Abstract
    What kinds of production capabilities are needed to bring innovation to market? The MIT Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE) research project has focused on this issue by tracking the trajectories of start-up companies over a ten year period; through interviews with “Main Street manufacturers” in Massachusetts, Ohio, Arizona, and Georgia; through interviews with Chinese manufacturers scaling-up Western innovation; in interviews and surveys exploring skills and jobs; and by work on advanced manufacturing technologies being developed in U.S. universities. Some preliminary findings from this research by 20 MIT faculty will be presented.

    » Toward a Third Industrial Divide? PDF

    Fred Block, Sociology, UC Davis
    Fred Block is Research Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Davis. His recent work has focused on documenting the substantial role that the U.S. government plays in technology development across the civilian economy. During the last thirty years while policymakers and pundits were singing the praises of "free markets", the reality was that the public sector significantly expanded its efforts to move research breakthroughs from the laboratory to the market. His book, State of Innovation: The U.S. Government’s Role in Technology Development, co-edited with Matthew R. Keller (Paradigm Publishers) contains a series of case studies that document different dimensions of this recently constructed innovation system. His current research centers on the kinds of financial reforms and new institutions required to supports innovation in this new context of public-private collaboration. His earlier books include The Origins of International Economic Disorder (1977), Postindustrial Possibilities (1990), and The Vampire State (1996). A new book with Margaret Somers, Karl Polanyi and the Battle of Economic Ideas, will appear in 2014.

    Abstract
    There is now a very strong logic of co-location of R&D and advanced manufacturing. This means that the historic focus of the U.S. on moving technologies from the laboratory to the commercial space is no longer a sufficient development strategy. As was seen in the case of flat panel displays and solar panels, both production and R&D move overseas when the government fails to help firms organize production domestically. While the Obama Administration used resources from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to make a shift in policy that helped firms build domestic production capacity for clean energy products, those resources are now exhausted.

    Effective reform of innovation policies requires increased funding for R&D and the government’s various commercialization initiatives. But these must be supplemented by a significantly expanded effort to strengthen domestic capacities for advanced manufacturing. The Federal Government’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership has a successful track record for over twenty years, but it operates on too small a scale. A very significant expansion in the resources devoted to manufacturing extension is of critical importance for future economic growth.

    » The Anatomy of Network Failure PDF

    Clair Brown, Economics, UC Berkeley
    Clair Brown was educated at Wellesley College and the University of Maryland, where she completed her PhD in economics in 1973. She arrived at Berkeley that same year as an assistant professor. Brown’s early research focused on employment disparities by gender and race, role of unemployment insurance, and women in the workplace. Her current research focuses on the global labor market for high-tech workers, the global competitive advantage of China, India and the US in the semiconductor industry, and the impact of education and immigration policies on engineers’ employment and earnings. Prof Brown is the Director of the Center for Work, Technology and Society, and past Director of the Institute of Industrial Relations. She is an Omron Fellow at the Doshisha Institute of Technology in Japan.

    Stephen Ezell, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, W.D.C.
    Stephen Ezell is a Senior Analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), with a focus on international information technology competitiveness and national innovation policies. Mr. Ezell holds a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, with an Honors Certificate from Georgetown’s Landegger International Business Diplomacy program. He is the co-author with Dr. Robert Atkinson of Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage (Yale University Press, September 2012).

    Abstract
    The international competitiveness of U.S. traded sector enterprises are central to the health of America’s economy, and there is no traded sector more important to the U.S. economy than manufacturing, and in particular advanced, technology-oriented manufacturing. While a number of policies will be needed to revitalize U.S. manufacturing–including ones related to streamlining taxes and regulations and improving talent–none are more important than helping American manufacturers innovate, raise their productivity, and upgrade their technological capacity. As American manufacturing won’t be competitive against low-wage foreign producers of commodity products, it’s going to have to win on the high-end through innovation, by producing things other countries cannot (or by producing the same things more efficiently). The presentation will lay out a number of policy recommendations to spur innovation among American manufacturers, from creating a national network of manufacturing institutes, to creating “manufacturing universities,” to increasing funding for and the effectiveness of programs such as the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) targeted toward SME manufacturers.

    » Worse Than the Great Depression: What Experts Are Missing About American Manufacturing Decline PDF
    » Fifty Ways to Leave Your Competitiveness Woes Behind: A National Traded Sector Competitiveness Strategy PDF

    Tim Sturgeon, Industrial Performance Center, MIT
    Timothy J. Sturgeon is a Senior Research Affiliate at the Industrial Performance Center (IPC) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-organizer of the Global Value Chains Initiative. He is co-principle investigator (with UC Berkeley’s Clair Brown) of the National Survey of Organizations to Study Globalization, Innovation and Employment; funded by the National Science Foundation. He has active research projects with the World Bank, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the United Nations Statistical Division, and the Japanese External Trade Organization, as well as with academic collaborators in Europe, China, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States. Tim held a Research Fellowship at the Institute for Technology, Enterprise, and Competitiveness (ITEC) at the Doshisha Management School in Kyoto, Japan from 2003 to 2007. He served as coordinator of the MIT IPC Services Offshoring Working Group, and was lead author of its final report, released in September 2006. Prior to this, Tim served as Executive Director of the IPC’s Globalization Study; Globalization Research Director for the International Motor Vehicle Program at MIT’s Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development; and Director of the MIT/Carnegie Mellon Project on Globalization and Jobs in the Automotive Industry, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    Abstract
    Questions of offshoring, its effects on manufacturing, and the role of domestic manufacturing in innovation, jobs, and the long-term competitiveness of the United States economy have been debated for many decades. The polarized and poor quality of the debate reflects, in part, a dearth of data about the effects of outsourcing and offshoring practices of United States firms. This presentation presents some recent results from the 2010 National Organizations Survey, which asks organizations about offshoring and outsourcing activities and jobs and earnings for eight generic business functions. The results show offshoring concentrated in the affiliates of large organizations in the goods producing and trade sectors, and extremely rare elsewhere in the economy. Domestic outsourcing; concentrated in transport, IT services, and facilities maintenance functions; appears to substitute for offshoring. International sourcing of an organization’s primary function (e.g., manufacturing), however, does appear to be associated with the offshoring of service functions within the same organization. International sourcing of R&D is rare and concentrated in high wage economies.

    » Direct Measurement of Global Value Chains: Collecting Product and Firm Level Statistics on Value Added and Business Function Outsourcing and Offshoring PDF
    » Measuring Sccess in the Global Economy: International Trade, Industrial Upgrading, and Business Function Outsourcing in Global Value Chains PDF
    » National Organizations Survey PDF
    » Workers’ Views of the Impact of Trade on Jobs PDF

     

    Evening Session — What Hope for Industrial Policy?

    David Card, Economics, UC Berkeley
    David Card is the Class of 1950 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research interests include immigration, wages, education, and health insurance. He co-authored the 1995 book Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, and co-edited The Handbook of Labor Economics (1999), Seeking a Premier Economy: The Economic Effects of British Economic Reforms (2004); and Small Differences that Matter: Labor Markets and Income Maintenance in Canada and the United States (1992). He has also published over 90 journal articles and book chapters.Card was co-editor of Econometrica from 1991 to 1995 and co-editor of the American Economic Review from 2002 to 2005. He taught at Princeton University from 1983 to 1996, and has held visiting appointments at Columbia University and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

    Ralph Gomory, New York University
    Gomory’s research interests include studies of the nature of technology and product development, and models of international trade. He has also contributed extensively to the mathematical fields of linear and integer programming. Before joining NYU in 2008 Gomory was President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 1989 through 2007 and earlier spent thirty years at IBM, serving first as a researcher, then IBM Fellow, then head of IBM’s Research Division and eventually as IBM Senior Vice President for Science and Technology. He has received many prizes both for his research and his technical leadership including the National Medal of Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering.

    Abstract
    The obstacles facing the adoption of a useful industrial policy for the United States will be discussed. It will be asserted that these obstacles relate to the fundamental motivation of American corporations as well as to the related shortcomings of our political system. Both the economic and political systems, as they are currently structured, may have significant shortcomings in the way they function in the modern globalized world.

    » The Corporation PDF

    Thea Lee, Economist, AFL-CIO
    Thea Lee is Deputy Chief of Staff at the AFL-CIO, where she previously served as Policy Director and Chief International Economist. Previously, she worked as an international trade economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and as an editor at Dollars & Sense magazine in Boston. Ms. Lee is co-author of A Field Guide to the Global Economy, published by the New Press. She serves on the State Department Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and the Export-Import Bank Advisory Committee. She is also on the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She received her BA from Smith College and her MA in Economics from the University of Michigan.

    » Remarks at the Conference on the Renaissance of American Manufacturing PDF
    » Why Does Manufacturing Matter? PDF

    Richard Walker, Geography, UC Berkeley
    Richard Walker’s research is focused on economic geography, regional development, capitalism and politics, cities and urbanism, resources and environment, California, class and race. His best known work is in economic geography, especially The Capitalist Imperative: Territory, Technology and Industrial Growth (Blackwell, 1989), with Michael Storper – one of the most cited books in the field. Walker served five years as Department Chair, 1994-99, helping to re-shape Berkeley Geography. He edited the journal Antipode throughout the 1990s and has been Chair of a statewide California Studies Association and of a California Studies Center at UC Berkeley since 2000. He has also been an activist in public affairs and on campus, fighting against such monstrosities as the Peripheral Canal, the Gulf War, and the Patriot Act.

     

Details

Date:
November 16, 2012
Time:
8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Event Category: