Robert Premus

Major Factors in Industrial Location: A Review

This article reviews findings of industrial location literature. Prior to the 1970s, the conventional view was that access to markets, labor, raw materials, and transportation were the dominant locational factors. More recent studies indicate that the traditional factors are still most important, but their dominance has been reduced as productivity, education, taxes, community attitudes toward business, and other factors have been recognized as influential. The most recently recognized locational determinants give additional scope to policies to enhance a communitys economic competitiveness.

Role of the university in regional economic development: the US experience

Universities have traditionally played a dual role in the nations innovation system. On the one hand, they enhance the stocks of knowledge and human capital through research and teaching. On the other hand, universities indirectly contribute to innovation in industry and economic growth. In the past few decades, many universities have formally incorporated regional economic development into their mission statements, and in response have spawned impressive growth in university technology transfer mechanisms, such as university-industry research centres, sponsored research, and on-campus licensing and commercialisation activities. These efforts have resulted in a substantial increase in industry support for university research, but the critics argue that selling research for dollars contaminates academic science and shrinks the academic commons. This paper examines evidence that universities contribute to regional economic growth by emphasising strong science research, contributing to human capital investments, and by making the ideas freely available to society. Regions grow when they have the infrastructure and skilled people to absorb the new ideas and turn them into commercial products. University technology transfer initiatives can aid the dissemination and absorption of new knowledge, and thus contribute to economic development, but also they have the potential to shorten time horizons if they place too much emphasis on the profit motive in allocating university resources. The paper concludes that universities need to take strong measures to protect the academic commons by assuring that the funds from commercial activities are used to support the long-term research and teaching missions of the university.

Information Sharing in Global Supply Chain Alliances

ABSTRACT The post–WWII economic expansion of economies such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and more recently China and India was enabled to a significant degree by the increasingly complex, global supply chain networks of large Original Equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the United States, European Union, and Japan. By linking buyers and suppliers across countries and industries, supply chain management (SCM) practices have a large impact on the economic fortunes of companies and countries throughout the world. Nowhere has the effect of this mutual interdependence been felt more strongly than between the U.S. companies and the Asia-Pacific market. Although the benefits of SCM are well documented, some evidence suggests that the reality of SCM implementation can create additional pressures for suppliers. We identify key problem areas experienced by suppliers and their link to the type of information shared by buying firms. The problem area experienced by most suppliers relates to issues of dependence in the alliance. Mere information sharing is insufficient for a successful alliance, and more information can be associated with a number of problems. For example, lack of information sharing can be associated with a suppliers perception of the buyer expecting excessive support. However, greater information sharing can be associated with a suppliers perception of the buyer passing on an excessive burden. Sharing of financial information is perceived as intrusive and controlling. These apparent contradictions uncover the complexity of the supply chain alliance. The moderating factors appear to be open communication and joint sharing of problem solving procedures—factors identified by suppliers that define a world-class buyer.

Moving Technology from Labs to Market: A Policy Perspective

In the 1980s, the USA initiated a set of policy innovations to encourage industrial innovation. Collectively, the policy innovations encouraged collaborative R&D in industry, technology transfer from universities and government laboratories to the private sector and cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) between government laboratories and industrial researchers. Patent and antitrust laws were revised and updated to afford inventors and industrial researchers greater protection of their intellectual property rights. These initiatives, along with tax credits, small business innovative research grants and the deployment of numerous university and government manufacturing research and extension centres, have been followed by a resurgence in US patent and industry funded research activities. The process by which the innovations are introduced and diffused throughout industry is examined in detail. The speed and direction of the diffusion path is found to be a function of the degree of complexity of the technology, the strategic behaviour of firms and the experience and core competencies and endowments of the firms. Since these factors differ among the firms, it is argued that adoption rates will vary by type of firm and by industry. Three case studies of start-up companies trying to commercialise environmentally friendly technologies are discussed. The case studies illustrate some of the challenges and problems of the entrepreneurs role in the innovation process. The role of the government in helping to stimulate the growth of environmentally friendly firms and industries is also discussed. (Publication abstract)

University Knowledge Production and Industrial Innovation: The Evidence

Universities can have the largest impact on regional economic growth by excelling in advanced research and by augmenting the regions stock of human capital. The combination of growth in the stocks of knowledge and human capital offer increasing returns in the regions knowledge production system and in the commercialisation of inventions. A survey of high technology company executives suggests that high-tech firms are drawn to quality university environments in order to gain better access to graduating students and to faculty research. An argument is presented to show that basic science research at universities is taking on added significance in the regional economic growth process, rather than being rendered obsolete by the shift in the loci of advanced research towards private research centres, corporate R&D, research hospitals, government laboratories and think tanks.

US technology policies and their regional effects

This paper contains an examination of the changes in US science and technology policies in response to the recently increasing international competition and worldwide economic restructuring. Although historically these policies have been the responsibility of the Federal Government, in recent years the states and local governments have emerged as important partners in a ‘grass roots’ movement to help bridge the gap between science and industry. The central focus is on overcoming technical, financial, labor market, and community locational barriers to high-technology expansion. The old practice of ‘smoke-stack’ chasing has given way to inward-looking policies that encourage business start-ups and expansions. Key objectives of state and local government policies are to increase the flow of new ideas into the innovation process, to shorten the time for its initial introduction into a new product or process technology, and for a more rapid assimilation of new technology through-out the regional industrial structure.

Technology transfer and regional economic growth issues

This paper explores the potential of technology transfer policy as a stimulus for regional economic development. It provides information relating to university research activities and the resulting productivity growth rates in national and regional economies. Problems and barriers encountered in managing the transfer of government and university technology across organisational boundaries are addressed. The role of the US Government laboratory system, however, as a source of new technologies for regional and national growth, needs to receive more attention in scholarly literature. Endogenous growth theory and knowledge spillovers, regional technology transfer issues and technology transfer process are discussed in the paper. A survey and case studies relating to technology transfer from government laboratories are also presented.

Outsourcing of Core and Non-Core Competencies in U.S. Corporations

Outsourcing has been a significant industry trend over the past decade. However, some scholars have stressed that companies may have gone too far by outsourcing core, as well as non-core competencies. Using a survey of large U.S. corporations our study documents the current status of outsourcing, differentiating between core and non-core competencies. We identify functions being outsourcing, satisfaction with sourcing decisions, as well as links to organizational performance measures.

A conjectural variations model of strategic rivalry in state economic development policy

Using a conjectural variations model of strategic rivalry, the paper examines the implications of regional policies aimed at creating local employment, given that many regions are pursuing the same policies. Among its results is an explanation for the recent, dramatic shift in regional policy emphasis at the local level from traditional locational subsidy scheme to create jobs to policies that use the tax, expenditure, and regulatory authority of government to improve factor markets (primarily labor quality) and enhance the technological capabilities of the regions. The analysis illustrates that while regional locational subsidy competition is not necessarily a zero sum game, a strategy of using local public sector resources to enhance regional competitiveness, under some circumstances, is superior.

A competitive model of local government organization: Implications for the process of community formation within metropolitan regions

ConclusionsThis paper has been primarily concerned with the impact of alternative governmental structures on public sector efficiency within an urban region. In order to identify some of the implications of economies of scale in production and consumption of public goods, the presence of interjurisdictional externalities, congestion costs in public good consumption, and constraints in housing markets and the way in which these factors are influenced by varying degrees of jurisdictional consolidation, many limiting assumptions have been introduced. Factors such as interjurisdictional differentials in affluence, radical prejudice, suboptimization and externalities exert strong influences on the organizational structures that emerge in existing urban areas. Furthermore, the emergence of new factors (e.g., energy problems, transportation system options, institutional constraints imposed by the interaction of localities with federally funded programs) will no doubt affect the opportunity costs of alternative governmental structures and patterns of community formation. Further research concerning the impact of these additional forces and their relationship to the factors analyzed in the paper would be useful.