Kenneth Flamm

Moore's law and the economics of semiconductor price trends

This paper constructs an analytical framework for understanding the technical origins and economic implications of distinctive patterns of innovation in semiconductors known as Moores Law. The history of Moores Law predictions is first reviewed. These predictions, coupled with additional assumptions, yield predictions of the cost or price of functionality on a semiconductor integrated circuit. Changes in historical declines in semiconductor prices are shown to be related to evolution in key technical parameters over successive generations of manufacturing technology. Significant changes in the organisation of semiconductor industry R&D in the 1990s appear linked to acceleration in the pace of innovation.

The role of semiconductor inputs in IT hardware price decline: computers vs. communications

Sharp declines in semiconductor prices are largely responsible for observed declines in computer prices. Although communications equipment also has a large semiconductor content, communications equipment prices do not fall nearly as fast as computer prices. This paper partly resolves the puzzle - first noted by Flamm(1989) - by demonstrating that prices for chips used in communications equipment do not fall nearly as fast as prices for those chips used in computers, and those differences are large enough to potentially explain all of the output price differences.

Outside looking in: shaping access and use of PCCs

We examine factors that mediate the access and use of public computing centers (PCCs) that are part of a United States government policy initiative to bridge the digital divide. Drawing on in-depth interviews and field observations conducted in the state of Texas, we interrogate how the social settings in which the sites are embedded, influence the way marginalized users approach and use the Internet resources inside the PCCs. Through our analysis, we demonstrate that access and use of PCCs is mediated by factors beyond the mere availability of computing infrastructure and include conditions such as fulfillment of routine life needs, geo-spatial characteristics of sites, availability of transport, and access to alternative sites of Internet access.

Knowledge and productivity in the pharmaceutical industry

Pharmaceutical firms perform R&D to develop and maintain core knowledge and capabilities. They use foundational knowledge to identify and evaluate relevant scientific advances and integrate those advances with existing knowledge and capabilities throughout the innovation pipeline. If core scientific knowledge and technical capabilities are used in this manner to increase innovative productivity by decreasing the use of other inputs, conventional measures of productivity based solely on outputs, per unit time, are likely to be inaccurate. We analyze productivity by examining development time and controlling for knowledge inputs. This approach measures the effect of core knowledge generated through pre-clinical laboratory R&D on development time in later stages of clinical development. We use patents and citations to model the use of technical knowledge generated through pre-clinical laboratory research in subsequent clinical development activities. Our results indicate that internally generated knowledge and patents, which builds on the existing scientific base are associated with shorter development times.

Has Moore's Law Been Repealed? An Economist's Perspective

Moores law in the semiconductor industry came to mean regular, predictable introductions of new manufacturing technology that enabled denser electronics. Adoption of new manufacturing technology, and its effect on silicon wafer-processing costs, determined how rapidly transistor manufacturing costs declined. In recent years, both cost decline rates and other economically valuable technical benefits flowing from use of the newest chip-making technology seem to have substantially diminished.