Reasons are suggested for care over the definition of high technology industry. Some general approaches to definition are outlined, and a chronology of definitions is presented. Conceptual and practical problems with conventional choices are discussed, and a new consensus definition — drawn from a survey of current practice in the USA — is suggested as a complement to objective definitions. This is used to speculate upon high tech's potential role in the overall US employment problem.
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Davis, op. cit.
Flynn, op. cit.
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The four-digit codes which are not included in the majority of four-digit definitions, but which are buried inside a three-digit code in the majority of three-digit definitions (presumably because the relative coarseness does not allow separation) are: turbines and turbine generator sets (SIC 3511), internal combustion engines nee (SIC 3519), typewriters (SIC 3572), phonograph records (SIC 3652), cathode ray television picture tubes (SIC 3672), and electronic connectors (SIC 3678). The implication is they are falsely included at a three-digit level. Conversely, the four-digit codes appearing in the majority of four-digit definitions, but which are not covered by the three-digit codes in the majority of three-digit definitions, are: industrial controls (SIC 3622), industrial organic chemicals nec (SIC 2869), X-ray apparatus and tubes (SIC 3693), and R & D labs (SIC 7391). The implication here is they are falsely omitted by a three-digit level of definition.
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US Office of Technology Assessment, op. cit., 1983a.
Flynn, op. cit.
For example, Vinson and Harrington's Table 4 has electrical industrial apparatus (SIC 362) incorrectly labelled as 372. The OTA in 1984a printed on p. 120 Armington et al.'s SIC code for small arms as 3486 when its actual number is 3484. A. Markusen, Defense Spending and the Geography of High Tech Industries, Working Paper No. 423, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720, 1984, on p. 35 allocates organic chemicals (misc) the code 2866 instead of the correct 2869, and radio, TV communications the code 3622 instead of 3662. These are easy transcription errors to make in the course of several drafts of typing.
For example, US High Technology Trade and Competitiveness, International Trade Administration, Office of Trade and Investment Analysis, US Department of Commerce, Staff Report DIE-01-85, USGPO, Washington DC, February 1985, includes SIC codes 287 and 351 in DOC1 (Boretsky's 1971 definition), whereas its earlier report, An Assessment of US Competitiveness in High Technology Industries, July 1983, does not. The ITA also includes SIC 361 (electric distributing equipment) in its version of DOC2, but this was in the non-technology intensive category in Table 4 of R. Kelly's original work. Tomaskovic-Devey and Miller and Flynn disagree over what is included in the Massachusetts definition: the former include SIC codes 281, 282, 351 and 372, which the latter omits, while the converse holds for codes 348, 363, 364, 365, 369, 379, 384, 385 and 387.
Langridge, op. cit.
Markusen, Hall and Glasmeier, op. cit.
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J. Grunwald and K. Flamm, The Global Factory: Foreign Assembly in International Trade, Brookings Institution, Washington DC, 1985.
Saxenian, op. cit.
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