Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Policy Tracker

China expands clean energy lead; Financial industry's growth stifled entrepreneurship

China expands clean energy lead; U.S. third
China expanded its global lead in clean energy investments last year, and Germany surged ahead of the United States to take the No. 2 position.

The U.S. was No. 1 in 2008, according to this annual ranking by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

America’s competitive position in the clean energy market could continue to slip unless the U.S. adopts stronger and more certain policies that encourage clean energy investments, according to Pew.

“There’s just a gigantic economic opportunity that’s at risk,” said Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew’s Clean Energy Program. “Congress and the administration have got to get their act together if we’re going to seize the opportunity.”

Clean energy investments in China jumped 39 percent in 2010 to $54.4 billion.

Wall Street raid on scientists may have stifled entrepreneurship
The financial industry’s dizzying growth prior to 2008’s credit crisis may have stifled entrepreneurship by stealing talent that otherwise would have gone to innovative new companies.

That’s the conclusion of a new Kauffman Foundation report, which found that the financial industry recruited scientists, mathematicians and engineers from graduate schools to create new financial instruments, such as the collerateralized debt obligations that led to the financial crisis.

“Their talents have made them well-suited to the design of these complex instruments, in return for which they often make starting salaries five times or more what their salaries would have been had they stayed in their own fields, and pursued employment with more tangible societal benefits,” the study stated.

“Because these new hires are often the very individuals who otherwise would have comprised the most robust pool of prospective founders of high-growth companies, the financial services industry’s steady rise has had a cannibalizing effect on entrepreneurship in the U.S. economy,” said Paul Kedrosky, the study’s co-author and a Kauffman senior fellow.

At MIT, for example, nearly 25 percent of all graduates went to work in the financial sector in 2006, up from 18 percent in 2003.

— Kent Hoover, ACBJ News Service