Government Support of the Semiconductor Industry: Diverse Approaches and Information Flows

Intensive research and development during the Second World War had resulted in new technologies uch as radar, the proximity fuse, and the atomic bomb, all of which contributed to the Allied victory. The Cold War marked a new era in government funding for research and development, however, as new geopolitical pressures convinced military and civilian policymakers to maintain R&D expenditures ata level far exceeding that of the prewar years. 2 The majority of government research dollars after the war went to a small number of industries, most prominently aerospace and electronics [Mowery and Rosenberg, 1989, p.132], amply supporting both fundamental nd applied research. 3 Government funding of industrial R&D has received a great deal of attention from scholars in a number of disciplines. In particular, historians and economists interested in technological