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Journal Article
Semiconductor Industrial Policy and the Fifth District
Chatham County, N.C., is a long way from Silicon Valley. Around 76,000 residents live here among the rolling hills of the Piedmont region, nestled between the Atlantic Plain and the Appalachian Mountains. Farming and mining have been the primary industries for generations. The county is about 2,700 miles away from Silicon Valley, the Bay Area region widely acknowledged as the world's semiconductor innovation hub for over half a century. But despite these differences in geography and reputation, in September 2022, Wolfspeed, a firm originally founded in North Carolina in 1987 as a developer ...
Discussion Paper
How the CHIPS and Science Act Will Target Economic Development in Distressed Labor Markets
As part of this past summer's CHIPS and Science Act, Congress not only funneled $50 billion of federal funding into U.S. semiconductor production, but also allocated $1 billion for a new place-based policy – the Recompete Pilot Program (RPP). The RPP, unrelated to semiconductor production, seeks to boost competitiveness and growth in several of the nation's persistently economically distressed areas. The program intends to target long-term comprehensive economic development and job creation in selected areas by supporting workforce development, business development, and infrastructure ...
Journal Article
Can the IRA and CHIPS Act Reduce Labor Earnings Inequality? Lessons from the US Shale Boom
We study how the US shale boom decreased labor earnings inequality by increasing demand for low-skill labor in small labor markets. The similarities in the concentrated geographic distribution of investments and the labor needed to build capacity between the US shale boom and the manufacturing construction influx that has followed the passage of the IRA and CHIPS and Science Acts raise the possibility that these bills could also impact labor earnings inequality in a similar way.