Robert D. Atkinson, Ph.D.
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Robert D. Atkinson is President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, DC-based technology policy think tank. He is also author of books, The Past and Future of America’s Economy: Long Waves of Innovation that Power Cycles of Growth (Edward Elgar, 2005), the State New Economy Index series and Supply-Side Follies: How Conservative Economics Fails, Liberal Economics Falters and Innovation Economics is the Answer. He has an extensive background in technology policy, he has conducted ground-breaking research projects on technology and innovation, is a valued adviser to state and national policy makers, and a popular speaker on innovation policy nationally and internationally.

Before coming to ITIF, Dr. Atkinson was Vice President of the Progressive Policy Institute and Director of PPI’s Technology & New Economy Project. While at PPI he wrote numerous research reports on technology and innovation policy, including on issues such as broadband telecommunications, Internet telephony, universal service, e-commerce, e-government, middleman opposition to e-commerce, privacy, copyright, RFID and smart cards, the role of IT in homeland security, the R&D tax credit, offshoring, and growth economics.

Previously Dr. Atkinson served as the first Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council, a public-private partnership including as members the Governor, legislative leaders, and corporate and labor leaders. As head of RIEPC, he was responsible for drafting a comprehensive economic strategic development plan for the state, developing a 10-point economic development plan, and working to successfully implement all 10 proposals through the legislative and administrative branches. Prior to that he was Project Director at the former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. While at OTA, he directed “The Technological Reshaping of Metropolitan America,” a seminal report examining the impact of the information technology revolution on America’s urban areas.

He is a board member or advisory council member of the Alliance for Public Technology, Information Policy Institute, Internet Education Foundation, NanoBusiness Alliance, NetChoice Coalition, the Pacific Institute for Workforce Innovation, and the University of Oregon Institute for Policy Research and Innovation. He also serves on the advisory panel to Americans for Computer Privacy, is an affiliated expert for the New Millennium Research Council, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Electronic Government, a member of the Reason Foundation’s Mobility Project Advisory Board, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Atkinson was appointed by President Clinton to the Commission on Workers, Communities, and Economic Change in the New Economy. In 2007 DOT Secretary Mary Peters appointed him to the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission. He is also a member of the Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, co-chaired by Markle Foundation president Zoe Baird and former Netscape Communications chairman James Barksdale. In 1999, he was featured in “Who’s Who in America: Finance and Industry.” In 2002, he was awarded the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award Silver Medal. In addition, Government Technology Magazine and the Center for Digital Government named him one of the 25 top “Doers, Dreamers and Drivers of Information Technology.” In 2006, Inc. magazine listed Atkinson as one of “19 Friends” of small business in Washington. He received his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1989.

Blog Entries by Robert D. Atkinson, Ph.D.

Worse Than the Great Depression: What Experts Are Missing About American Manufacturing's Decline

0 Comments | Posted March 20, 2012 | 4:58 PM

In the 2000s, U.S. manufacturing suffered its worst performance in American history. Not only did America lose 5.7 million manufacturing jobs, but the decline as a share of total jobs (33 percent) exceeded the rate of loss in the Great Depression.

Despite this unprecedented negative performance, most economists, pundits...

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Antiquated Economic Policies Are Killing Jobs More Than Robots

0 Comments | Posted December 9, 2011 | 2:18 PM

Why can't we create jobs the way we used to? Despite nearly a trillion dollars' worth of tax breaks and investments in a stimulus package, interest rates as low as they can go, auto bailouts, bank bailouts, "quantitative easing," and public and private sector leaders' calls for optimism, the official...

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Let's Get the Trans-Pacific Partnership Right

0 Comments | Posted May 26, 2011 | 4:54 PM

The Obama Administration is wisely moving forward with a landmark trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). With origins in the Bush Administration, the TPP would increase regional economic integration between the United States and eight other Asia-Pacific nations: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The...

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The Corporate Tax Simplification Delusion

0 Comments | Posted February 16, 2011 | 10:53 AM

When President Obama, in his State of the Union, called on Congress to join with him to, "get rid of the loopholes. Level the playing field. And use the savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years -- without adding to our deficit," he...

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Ending Innovation Mercantilism

0 Comments | Posted October 26, 2010 | 2:34 PM

The following is a guest post written by Stephen Ezell, Senior Analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

As it's becoming clearer every day that innovation is the central driver of economic growth, more and more countries are trying to be innovation leaders. Unfortunately, in that quest all too many countries...

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In Defense of Bill Gates

0 Comments | Posted August 4, 2010 | 4:58 PM

If you want to understand why we haven't made any measurable progress on energy and climate change for the last 30 years, there's no better place to look than the visceral partisan reaction to Bill Gates' recent call for major federal investment in energy innovation.

Gates has been speaking...

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The Failure of American Higher Education

0 Comments | Posted July 1, 2010 | 12:02 PM

Attend any policy discussion in Washington that deals with education and the standard line you will hear is "the American K-12 system is a failure, but thank God we still have the world's greatest higher ed system." Let me suggest that this is fundamentally wrong. Higher ed is failing almost...

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For Once and for All, Let's Agree the Government Can and Should Pick Winners

0 Comments | Posted April 22, 2010 | 5:59 PM

Notwithstanding the Tea Party fear mongering, there is a lot of trepidation these days about America drifting toward socialism and the growth of government. (Put aside the fact that it is not true. Aside from health care, the huge government interventions over the last 18 months were isolated emergency actions...

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Shooting the Messenger

0 Comments | Posted March 21, 2010 | 6:54 PM

In the last few years a troubling development has emerged in U.S. telecom and Internet policy. Network policy didn't used to be highly partisan; emblematic of this is the fact that the 1996 Telecommunications Act was passed along bipartisan lines. Increasingly, however, the dialogue over networking policy has become shrill,...

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New Year's Resolution: Stop Stealing to Save American Jobs

0 Comments | Posted January 6, 2010 | 10:12 AM

The following is a guest post written by Daniel Castro, Senior Analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

Would the U.S. government turn a blind eye to the theft of hundreds of thousands of GM vehicles each year? Of course not. Yet, large-scale theft occurs every day on the...

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Whack-A-Mole Security: Bad Policy, Bad Legislation

0 Comments | Posted November 20, 2009 | 7:15 PM

Guest post by Daniel Castro, Senior Analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

The recent disclosure of a confidential Congressional document has at least one congressman calling for a ban on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software, but a closer look at the problem reveals that this effort would merely be treating...

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A Stimulus Package We Can Believe In

0 Comments | Posted January 7, 2009 | 2:35 PM

President-elect Obama made his campaign about change and promises to do the same with government. One area to start is with the proposed stimulus package.

Already he has said this one will be different. His transition team released a statement yesterday that they were going to ban all earmarks...

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The Right Broadband Stimulus Package

0 Comments | Posted December 23, 2008 | 11:18 AM

The stimulus package being considered by Congress presents a once in a generation opportunity to upgrade our nation's broadband infrastructure, but only if the proposals are based on pragmatic logic rather than ideological wishful thinking.

Congress will hopefully include a sizeable investment in broadband infrastructure in the stimulus package expected...

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Which Obamanomics?

0 Comments | Posted November 5, 2008 | 3:12 PM

Regardless of your political affiliation and how you feel about the election results, you will probably agree that yesterday was truly a historic day for the nation, electing for the first time an African-American president.

As Senator Obama prepares for the task of governing the nation, a key question is...

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Who's Your Economic Daddy?

0 Comments | Posted August 21, 2008 | 2:04 PM

For most people, debating economic doctrines is a pastime best left to the Ph.D. economists working in government, think tanks and universities. Yet economic doctrines are at the heart of the economic policies being debated right now in the presidential campaign, in the halls of Congress, and in the current...

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Why China Needs To End Its Economic Mercantilism

0 Comments | Posted January 30, 2008 | 9:45 AM

Recently, the World Bank published revised statistics on PPP (purchasing power parity) -- adjusted GDP--that suggest that the Chinese economy is 40 percent smaller than was previously estimated. After recently returning from two weeks in southern China, I have to say that the new picture of a poorer China did...

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Electronic Voting: If It Is Good Enough For Congress

0 Comments | Posted September 19, 2007 | 10:02 PM

Congress is currently considering H.R. 811 "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007" which would require that all electronic voting machines used in federal elections produce a "voter verified paper audit trail." The hope is that paper audit trails would make our elections more secure by preventing certain...

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The Day the (Web) Music Died

0 Comments | Posted July 12, 2007 | 7:22 PM

Internet radio has been a rising star among innovative Web 2.0 applications. With more than 60 million American users, it surpasses many of the top Internet destinations such as Facebook, which only brings in 27 million unique visitors a month. But with mandatory broadcast fees paid to the recording...

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Huey Long Democrats

0 Comments | Posted June 26, 2007 | 5:03 PM

During the Great Depression, Senator Huey Long, the populist firebrand from Louisiana, proposed his Share Our Wealth Society, a radical program of wealth redistribution from the rich to "working Americans." In announcing his plan, the Kingfish stated "let no one tell you that it is difficult to redistribute the wealth...

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Broadband Blues

0 Comments | Posted June 4, 2007 | 4:41 PM

Last year the hot debate in telecom policy circles was over "net neutrality." This year it's over whether the United States is losing the broadband race.

At first glance, there shouldn't be much of a debate. According to the OECD, the U.S. ranks 15th among 30 OECD nations...

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