Chapter 6: Science & Engineering Indicators 93
The Importance of High-Tech Production
High-technology goods are driving national economic growth in all of the major industrialized countries.(Click here for footnote 4.) The global market for high-tech manufactured goods is growing at a faster rate than that for other manufactured goods. In constant dollar terms (1980),(Click here for footnote
5.) production of high-tech manufactures by the major industrialized nations more than doubled from 1981 to 1992, while production of other manufactured goods grew by just 29 percent. (See figure
6-2 and appendix table 6-4.) Output by the high-tech industries represented under 14 percent of global production of all manufactured goods in 1981; by 1992, it represented 22 percent.
In the increasingly competitive environment of the 1980s, the United States, Japan, and Europe moved resources toward the manufacture of higher value, technology-intensive goods. In 1989, U.S. high-tech manufactures represented 23 percent of total
U.S. production of manufactured output, up from 15 percent in 1981. High-tech manufactures accounted for 16 percent of the European Community's total production in 1989, compared with 12 percent in 1981. But the Japanese economy led all other major
industrialized countries in its economic reliance on the high-tech industries; this emphasis on high-tech manufacturing began to increase rapidly during the middle part of the decade. In 1981, high-tech manufactures represented nearly 17 percent of
total Japanese production, rose to 22 percent in 1984, and then to 29 percent in 1989. (See figure 6-3.)
Data for the 1990s indicate a continued focus on high-tech manufactures among the industrialized countries. High-tech manufactures are estimated to represent 27 percent of U.S. manufacturing output in 1992, 31 percent of Japan's and nearly 17 percent
for the European Community countries.(Click here for footnote 6.)
Footnote 4:
The OECD member countries account for over 75 percent of global exports of manufactured goods and account for an even higher percentage of overall exports of high-technology goods (ITA 1985, p. 43). The 24
countries reporting to OECD are Australia, Austria, Belgium/Luxembourg, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom,
the United States, and Germany.
Although the OECD data set does not include several nations of increasing importance in technology markets--most notably, the East Asian newly industrialized economies--it does provide a reasonable approximation of global commercial activity.
Footnote 5:
The conversion into constant 1980 dollars is done in two steps:
- Product-specific price changes are removed by deflating the current dollar series for each product category (for all countries) using the price index (1980 = 1.0) for the corresponding industry in DRI/McGraw-Hill's 430-sector inter-industry
model of the U.S. economy.
- All production series for a given country are multiplied by the ratio of the U.S. gross national product deflator to the gross domestic product deflator of that country to adjust for differences in the general rate of inflation.
Footnote 6:
Data for 1991 and 1992 are estimates by DRI/McGraw-Hill.
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