State Technology-Based Economic Development (TBED) strategies

The absence of a broad and well-funded national technology-based growth strategy has placed an increasing burden on state governments who are seeking to promote regional TBED as a response to both growing global competition and the consequent imperative to create higher valued added industries. The motivation is that regional concentration of TBED assets leads to the realization of economies of scale and scope. The result is higher incomes for workers, and their jobs are less likely to be outsourced to other economies. In pursuit of this objective, U.S. legislation in the 2021-23 period finally provided substantial funding targeting TBED. However, implementing regional growth initiatives is a substantial challenge for state and local governments because implementing the required investments requires a range of policy tools that are difficult to apply successfully. To this end, the national government must provide investment assistance in early-stage technology development and also for production scale-up, as significant economies of scale and especially scope exist in developing and implementing specific policy instruments at the several stages of technology-based economic life cycles.