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The value of the Department of Energy (DOE)-owned national laboratories to the U.S. national innovation system has long been a subject of debate. Advocates have drawn attention to the central role of the labs in the development of technologies including advanced batteries, solar energy breakthroughs, imaging technologies, and various IT endeavors, among others. Critics have recurrently suggested that the labs' innovative capacities have been undermined by a lack of engagement with commercial firms and managerial tactics. Perhaps surprisingly, what has often been missing from the debate is a thorough review of data on the public-private partnerships in which the labs engage with private firms. This paper draws on heretofore non-public data on one type of contractual arrangement - Work-For-Others (WFO) agreements - in which the labs perform contract work for private firms. We review 10 years of WFO data for a single DOE laboratory. Our analysis provides an initial picture of the surprisingly diverse geography and array of firms that employed the labs as contract R&D providers, as well as of key characteristics of these agreements. Although our data capture only a single laboratory's agreements, the findings reinforce the importance of looking at the complex, overlapping network of programs within the U.S. federal system that support private sector innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A profound belief in the stability and resilience of the American imperial economy exists even among many of those dedicated to its overthrow. There are many broad similarities between the British Empire of the 19th century and the American empire of the 20th century. Great Britain directly controlled a huge formal empire and through investments and trade dominated many other nominally independent countries. The U.S. today by virtue of its economic and military superiority presides over a huge neo-colonial empire. A network of military bases around the world is matched by a network of foreign investments and trade relations. As Great Britain was the first nation to industrialize, the spread of the new industrial forms throughout the economy was uneven. Once the first industries, textiles and later railroads, were modernized, there were no immediate successors, and large amounts of capital continued to be poured into these two industries, giving them a productive capacity out of all proportion to the existing needs of the domestic economy. The upshot was that export markets became crucial.