ABSTRACT
Since 2000, when the United States officially launched its National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), global public spending on nanotechnology has totaled an estimated $67.5 billion. If one includes corporate research and private funding more generally, the total of public and private spending is predicted to reach as much as a quarter of a trillion dollars by 2015 (Cientifica, 2011). Clearly, pubic officials across the world have come to see nanotechnology as the next technological revolution; firms and investors—no doubt in part attracted by the availability of public funding—have followed suit. Does this race to the bottom—investing significant public resources in nanoscale-level research development, and possibly commercialization— constitute industrial policy? How successful is it likely to be? A comparison of the two countries that have invested the most in nanotechnology will hopefully shed some light on these questions.
