The Wanxiang Group was awarded a contract by the City of Hangzhou to develop a new industrial park, named the Wanxiang Innovation Energy Fusion City (WIEFC) over the next seven years (2017–2024). In 2016, the Group asked the RAND Corporation to help achieve its vision of developing the WIEFC into an innovative cluster built around smart and green automotive technologies by developing a mission statement and recommending supporting policies. There are several hundred industrial technology parks around the world, and developing innovative clusters occupies a prominent place among the goals of their planners. As a result, innovative clusters have been widely studied. Much is known about what policies and structures have been adopted, but less is known about what has worked. Identifying policies and structures that will successfully spark an innovative cluster is, therefore, at the heart of the present study. For this purpose, we sought to draw lessons from global experience, while also understanding the local context within which the WIEFC will operate. First, in support of the Group’s vision for the WIEFC, we recommend a mission that describes the aims of the WIEFC. Second, this report identifies the contributing factors required to achieve that mission. Through an intensive, in-person study of two locations—the Stuttgart automotive cluster in Germany and the Aichi automotive cluster in Japan—supplemented by lessons from the academic literature on other clusters, these factors are sequenced into originating and sustaining factors. We then recommend policies for the implementation of these factors. Finally, we identify outcomes to measure the progress of the recommended policies.

The aim of this “test-of-concept” document is to develop several portfolios of possible deals, bargains, or arrangements between the U.S. and China that: (a) illustrate their convergent and divergent interests (including both security and economic interests); (b) suggest how their convergent interests can be enhanced for their mutual benefit; (c) illustrate how their divergent interests might be mitigated by reciprocal concessions that (together with (b) above) can produce “win-win” outcomes that both sides would view as preferable to present circumstances; and (d) are potentially negotiable, verifiable, and sustainable. Based on our preliminary work, we assess that several potential “win-win” outcomes can be reached by the United States and China through reciprocal concessions, such as U.S. reductions in arms sales to Taiwan, while China reciprocates by deferring sovereignty issues in the South China Sea (SCS) and instead agrees to vest SCS mineral and other resources in a multinational holding company whose ownership is shared among China and other claimant countries. The report should be of interest to U.S. and Chinese foreign affairs and defense policymakers who are involved in managing the U.S.-China bilateral relationship. This research was sponsored by a grant from a private foundation.

My dissertation uses a mix of both quantitative and qualitative methods to help policy makers identify sources of innovation in the knowledge-based economy and to best leverage these sources for regional economic growth. Specifically, I am evaluating two case studies in Los Angeles: As part of my first case study, I develop a stakeholder map to inform USC’s efforts to build a Biotech Science Park in South-East Los Angeles. As part of this undertaking, I conducted interviews and focus groups with USC faculty members and researchers, community residents, local small and large business owners, policy makers and academic experts in order to both assess entrepreneurial needs and community capacities. For my second case study, I carry out an exploratory analysis of the Silicon Beach technology innovation movement in West Los Angeles. In order to do so, I constructed a geocoded venture capital database from Crunchbase.com, an open-source startup registry, and used correlational and time series analyses in order to detect predictors of firm success and patterns of locational decisions. Following a thorough analysis of these two case studies, I conclude by recommending that policy makers in Los Angeles work to establish a framework to enhance connectivity and visibility of regional sources of innovation, including entrepreneurs, research institutions, business support entities and investors in order to nurture and cultivate a vibrant entrepreneurial network.

What will be the key societal challenges that the EU will need to address within the next two decades? Building on an evidence base provided by a review of literature, data and insights from over 200 international experts from academia, think tanks, policy and the private sector, this report explores evidence and uncertainties underpinning global societal trends and the challenges they provide for policymakers. The report analyses trends under the following themes: income equality and global middle class; a globally expanding and ageing population; employment and the changing labour force; evolving patterns and impacts of migration; and the potential of connected societies for empowering individuals. Commissioned on behalf of the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS), the goal behind this research effort is to help put in place a lasting framework to assess salient global trends. With this foundation, the report concludes that there are a number of salient policy challenges clustered around three themes: 1) Investing in citizens: Equipping EU citizens with the tools to seize opportunities and protect the most vulnerable; Preparing for a new growth paradigm: Focusing on wellbeing beyond productivity growth and enabling businesses to compete globally and in the internal market; and 3) Reinventing government: Recalibrating the public sector machinery and services to accommodate the realities of the 21st century. Some trends and challenges are much more uncertain however. The report suggests that the EU should increase its own resilience, limit vulnerability to the most unpredictable trends, and better define and enact policy responses.

Income tax evasion is a problem that poses considerable challenges for tax authorities and governments at the local, state, federal levels, as well as internationally. Its causes and implications are both economic and social, and therefore it is of enormous importance in policy design. We built an agent-based computational simulation model of income tax evasion. Within the simulation, individuals' compliance behavior changes through an adaptation process based on their past experiences with audits and tax evasion penalties, their perception of the fairness in taxation rates and social interactions with people in their social networks. To inform the model we have conducted a survey on a nationally representative sample on the perceptions of tax fairness. The specific purpose of our survey was to guide the model construction, test our model assumptions, as well as inform behavioral parameter values and the calibration procedure. In addition, the survey provides novel insights into the social dynamics of risk and fairness perceptions, including how they are influenced by perceptions and experiences of social network contacts and in community at large. Here, we present technical details that describe our model and how it was informed by our survey. In our first two sections we provide a brief introduction to the problem and an overview of past agent-based models of tax compliance. Sections 3 to 11 provide a description of our agent based model following the overview, design concepts, and details protocol [69, 70]. Section 12 to 15 provides description of our survey and focuses only on the analyses that helped inform the model and in particular the behavioral mechanisms and parameter values. Sections 17 to 20 described model verification, validation and calibration. Sections 21 and 22 describes results from possible intervention policy. Finally, Sections 23 and 24 provide a discussion of our results and describe limitations and future work.

Over the last decade, business accelerators have begun to proliferate across the United States. These organizations aim to identify, mentor, and financially support startups through high-intensity, short-term programs offered in exchange for equity. Governments at all levels have begun to notice the growth in new accelerators throughout the country and are keenly interested in spurring economic development. Yet, traditionally there have been few public policy opportunities to target early stage, high-growth firms. The rise of accelerators, as catalysts for high value-added ideas, offers a potential pathway for governments to influence innovation by supporting programs that can bring in new firms to their regions and assist in developing a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, it is not yet clear how governments can best support accelerators to spur innovation. To identify the most valuable role of public policy in supporting business accelerators, we interviewed managers and leaders of accelerators who have received awards through the U.S. Small Business Administration's Growth Accelerator Fund Competition over the past three years. Our qualitative analysis explores the broad challenges experienced by these organizations as they have developed and refined their programs. These challenges ultimately focused on issues with effectively executing the standard accelerator model and issues due to government actions that were not directly targeting accelerators. We mapped these challenges to traditional public policy roles and ultimately identified a series of potential interventions that the Small Business Administration could undertake to enable accelerators to be more successful in spurring innovation. If the Federal Government continues to focus on these entrepreneurial support organizations, then additional educational initiatives, convening activities, and research activities could further assist accelerators.

With over 6 billion devices projected to be connected to the world's information superhighway in 2016, the internet will continue to serve as a driving force for economic growth and innovation. Yet, recent developments in regulating the digital world, and cloud computing specifically, illustrate that such expansion should not be taken for granted. In fact, increasingly more restrictive measures have been imposed on digital technology providers and users world-wide, leading to a growing uncertainty about the future of digital commerce and communication. Our research indicates that while greater data localization is likely to characterize the internet of the future, new business opportunities will emerge for the providers of cloud computing technology and services.