Manufacturing matters to the United States because it provides high-wage jobs, commercial innovation (the nation’s largest source), a key to trade deficit reduction, and a disproportionately large contribution to environmental sustainability. The manufacturing industries and firms that make...

Analysis of data on employment, earnings, and the number of business establishments engaged in U.S. manufacturing finds that:In Metropolitan areas, especially large metropolitan areas and central metropolitan counties, contain the great majority of manufacturing jobs and nearly all very...

Improving manufacturing’s performance is a crucial part of the solution to America’s trade, innovation, and income distribution problems and is especially important to the well-being of metropolitan areas throughout the Great Lakes region. Manufacturing’s decline has contributed to the...

The United States lost 4.5 million manufacturing jobs, about 24 percent of its manufacturing base, between 1980 and 2005. This loss, its causes, and its consequences for displaced workers and the nation as a whole, have been extensively studied and debated. Yet researchers have paid little...

Over the last 20 years, the success of Japanese manufacturing firms has brought renewed attention to the importance of cost reduction on existing products as a source of productivity growth. This paper uses survey data and field interviews from the auto supply industry to explore the...

Using an original data source, this paper investigates the circumstances under which firms adopt computer numerical control (CNC), an important type of flexible automation which can significantly increase productivity, product variety and quality. The paper shows that arms'-length...

This paper assesses the structure and functioning of the U.S. federal government's innovation policy, focusing on those programs that are designed to promote commercial innovation. Using economic and political theory, institutional analysis, program data, and comparisons with innovation policies...

The United States lost 4.5 million manufacturing jobs, about 24 percent of its manufacturing base, between 1980 and 2005. This loss, its causes, and its consequences for displaced workers and the nation as a whole, have been extensively studied and debated. Yet researchers have paid little...

Although the literature on regional macroeconomics continues to emphasize the analysis of economic growth, the concept of economic resilience is of increasing interest to policymakers. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 focused attention on the ability of...

This report shows how public policy and economic development strategy responded to the loss of manufacturing jobs in eight metropolitan areas: Charlotte, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Hartford, Indianapolis, Louisville, Rochester (NY), and. Scranton. For each metropolitan area it describes the...