focus on high-tech

For the past 2 decades, high-tech fever has been contagious. Regional economic researchers have been struck by the dynamism of these new industries and their apparent roles in driving differences in regional growth rates. Places like Silicon Valley, and Routes 128 and 495 outside Boston, have achieved fame as prototypes for new industrial regions. And state and local officials have created strategies to grow, attract, and retain high-tech industries and firms. But what exactly is a high-tech industry? And how can we determine how high-tech a city or metro area is? In the late 1970s, researchers often used the share of scientists or engineers to classify an industry as high-tech, but recent studies have tended to focus on factors such as whether the industry produces high-tech products - like electronics and computers - or uses high-tech inputs - for example, spends a lot of money on research and development.