American public policy has had a long history of technological optimism. The success of the United States in research and development contributes to this optimism and leads many to assume that there is a technological fix for significant national problems. Since World War II the federal government has been the major supporter of commercial research and development efforts in a wide variety of industries. But how successful are these projects? And equally important, how do economic and policy factors influence performance and are these influences predictable and controllable?

Linda Cohen, Roger Noll, and three other economists address these questions while focusing on the importance of R& D to the national economy. They examine the codependency between technological progress and economic growth and explain such matters as why the private sector often fails to fund commercially applicable research adequately and why the government should focus support on some industries and not others. They also analyze political incentives facing officials who enact and implement programs and the subsequent forces affecting decisions to continue, terminate, or redirect them. The central part of this book presents detailed case histories of six programs: the supersonic transport, communications satellites, the space shuttle, the breeder reactor, photovoltaics, and synthetic fuels. The authors conclude with recommendations for program restructuring to minimize the conflict between economic objectives and political constraints.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Rapid progress in information technologies has produced an ever-broadening array of choices in information products. At the same time, it has caused historically segmented industries, such as television, telephones, computers, and print media, to converge and compete. The result is a cornucopia of products and potential in communications along with enormous strain on the governmental institutions that use and regulate information technology. The essays in this book provide a broad look at the many ways that information technology relates to issues of governance and public policy. Adjusting regulatory instititions to the new technical realities is a great challenge. Will monopoly power threaten the traditionally regulated areas of telephones and cable television or the software systems that integrate all information technologies into a single system with many competing players? Can traditional approaches to intellectual property rights and control of socially harmful content be applied to the converged information sector? This book sheds light on these issues, and in so doing demonstrates the usefulness of rigorous, multidisciplinary policy analysis in assessing the significance of changing technology.

The American research university enjoyed an unprecedented boom from the end of World War II until the 1990s. All sources of financial support for universities--federal grants, private gifts, state appropriations, student tuition, and revenues from university medical centers--grew substantially. As a result, traditionally prestigious universities expanded and numerous other universities were transformed from primarily teaching institutions to significant research centers. But in the 1990s, research universities have experienced the first protracted challenge to the boom of the preceeding four decades. This book examines the nature of the challenges to research universities, and their likely effects on the number, size, and operation of these universities. The authors assess the prospects for research support from government, industry, and profits from university medical centers, and conclude that the future does not appear bright in these cases. They also examine the methods used by the federal government to pay for university research, and propose changes that would make both universities and the federal government better off by reducing the administrative costs of federal grants. Their primary conclusion is that in the next decade American research universities will face increasingly stringent budgets, and will be forced to shrink and refocus their activities in order to survive as research institutions.

America is in the midst of a sports building boom. Professional sports teams are demanding and receiving fancy new playing facilities that are heavily subsidized by government. In many cases, the rationale given for these subsidies is that attracting or retaining a professional sports franchise--even a minor league baseball team or a major league pre-season training facility--more than pays for itself in increased tax revenues, local economic development, and job creation. But are these claims true? To assess the case for subsidies, this book examines the economic impact of new stadiums and the presence of a sports franchise on the local economy. It first explores such general issues as the appropriate method for measuring economic benefits and costs, the source of the bargaining power of teams in obtaining subsidies from local government, the local politics of attracting and retaining teams, the relationship between sports and local employment, and the importance of stadium design in influencing the economic impact of a facility. The second part of the book contains case studies of major league sports facilities in Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, San Francisco, and the Twin Cities, and of minor league stadiums and spring training facilities in baseball. The primary conclusions are: first, sports teams and facilities are not a source of local economic growth and employment; second, the magnitude of the net subsidy exceeds the financial benefit of a new stadium to a team; and, third, the most plausible reasons that cities are willing to subsidize sports teams are the intense popularity of sports among a substantial proportion of voters and businesses and theleverage that teams enjoy from the monopoly position of professional sports leagues.

"Many observers agree that federal regulation of business often fails to prevent monopoly profits, promote technological change, or protect consumers against market abuses. Why? President Nixon assigned the task of proposing reforms to his Advisory Council on Executive Organization, called the Ash Council after its chairman, Roy L. Ash. The object of both the Council's report and this paper is to advance the public search for reform. The council suggested that a leading cause of regulatory failure lies in the organization of regulatory agencies. This analysis leads to an alternative view-that the regulatory process is inherently flawed regardless of agency organization, and the real sources of weakness may be laws establishing regulatory mandates and the political environment in which regulation operates. Drawing on the insights of economists, political scientists, and lawyers, the author examines a number of federal regulatory agencies and views their performance in the light of regulatory theory. He prescribes no remedies but suggests the route to be followed if regulation is to approach its economic and social goals. "