The program’s focus is on the dynamics of the macroeconomic and microeconomic variables, their relationship to the industrial structure of the economy, effect on high-technology manufacturing and service sectors, and influence on U.S. scientific and technological advancement through examination of trade, human resources, fiscal, research and development, intellectual property and other policies.
They proposed to the National Research Council (NRC) Governing Board of Directors of the NAS to create a new standing committee as a forum for dialogue among economists, technologists, and industrial managers to those ends.
Over the past 16 years the membership has included leading industrialists (Rube Mettler, Don Peterson, Bill Spencer), three Nobel Laureates (Mike Spence, Joe Stiglitz, and Jim Heckman) among many leading microeconomists, prominent venture capitalists (Burton McMurtry, Kathy Behrens, and David Morgenthaler), scientists and engineers from the Academies (George Whitesides and Vint Cerf), former policymakers (James Lynn, Mary Good, and Alan Wolff), and people whose careers have bridged the corporate and nonprofit sectors (Edward Penhoet) or industry and elective politics (Amo Houghton, Jr.).
Indeed, the perception that Japan enjoyed a broad and enduring competitive advantage from a substantially lower cost of capital was a motivating factor in establishing the Board and became the subject of its first conference and report.
A major focus since the late 1990s has been on the reasons for the improved competitiveness of many U.S. industries and the resurgence in productivity growth, the extent to which these are accurately measured and reflected in the national economic accounts, and how they can be sustained.
This diversification has been a key to STEP’s success and endurance, but the board is mindful that global competition and its effects on Americans’ employment and welfare remain the principal driver of its agenda.
On the first dimension, STEP has focused intensively on semiconductors, software, computing (and its component technologies), and biotechnology and given considerable attention also to aviation, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, telecommunications, metal fabrication, and finance.
At the same time, STEP has done significant although by no means exhaustive work on the following microeconomic policies – tax, trade, standards, K-12 and graduate education, workforce training, intellectual property, economic statistics, and, of course, direct and indirect research and development support.
In addition, an effort is made to ensure that study committee rosters recommended to the Division Chair and the President include a mix of expertise and experience similar to that on the board itself – industrial technologists, economists, financial executives, academic scientists, and former policymakers STEP has also contributed to dialogue within the NRC.
STEP has benefited from and exploited the microeconomic field of technology and productivity analysis that is the fairly recent legacy of Griliches, Jorgenson, Solow, Mansfield, and others as well as the work of international trade economists.
[1] In April 2004 a STEP committee chaired by Yale President Richard Levin and former Xerox CTO Mark Myers issued a final report of a broad study of how well the U.S. patent system is fulfilling its purpose of encouraging research, innovation, and the dissemination of knowledge and how it is adapting to rapid technological and economic changes.
[2] With dedicated dissemination funds provided by the NRC, a private foundation, and several companies and law firms, a very extensive outreach effort, involving public meetings across the country, was undertaken.
A formal collaboration with two of the German economic research institutes yielded two reports, and in 1995 STEP was asked to host an international conference on technology and jobs preparatory to the G-7 Summit meeting.
Discussion is underway with members of Congress of a major study of the role of intangible assets (R&D, intellectual property, software, worker training, and organizational competence) in economic growth.