Estimating Economic Impacts of Governement Technology Programs: Manufacturing Studies Using the REMI Model

摘要

Government technology programs such as NIST's Manufacturing extension Partnership (MEP) work to keep the U.S. economy healthy and its firms globally competitive. Economic tools are for gauging the effectiveness of such programs. This report presents one such tool, a model for measuring the microeconomic, industrial, and macroeconoic implacts of government technology programs. This economic impact model is a three-step framework that traces the effects of government program activities on the macro economy. Step 1 calculates the government program's impact on individual firms. Step2 translates the individual-firm impacts to industry-level impacts. Finally, Step 3 estimates macroeconomic impacts usting the industry-level impacts and a macroeconomic simulation and forecasting model called REMI(Regional Economic Modeling, Inc.) Three economic studies illustrate the impact model. The first two are introductory examples that use a basic version of the model. They analyze two hypothetical benefits provided by a government technology program to individual manufacturing establishments, an increase in their labor productivity and an increase in their exports. The third study is a more detailed analysis based on actual labor productivity increases reported for manufacturers that received assistance from industrial extension centers similar to the MEP centers. This study uses the full version of the economic impact model which has the added capability of capturing non-market impacts that spill over to other firms, and impacts that the government has directly on industries and the larger macro economy. The case study also provides an estimate of the tax revenues that the technolgoy program generates.