Research On High-tech Industry's Economic Characteristics And Policy Options

The world has entered the knowledge economy era. With increasingly economy globalization, technology and talents have become the most important factors in the competition among countries. The high-tech industry, as a driving force for the development of economy in the 21st century, is being more and more important in the world economy. With its increasing status, the high-tech industry has gotten more and more attention and many countries have constituted policies and measures to promote its development.In addition to having the nature of the traditional industries, the high-tech industry also has its own unique economic characteristics. They mainly include the cost, production factors structure, competition property, asymmetric information, external effects, industrial agglomeration effect and the value chain, etc. These characteristics make the high-tech industry different with traditional industries in its development course: technology and talents factors play more evident roles in the development of the high-tech industry; the high-tech industry has shown scale economy on both demand and production; the process of high-tech industrialization is full of asymmetric information; its quasi-public product nature makes high-tech industry not only demonstrate technical and knowledge spillover effect but also demonstrate human capital external effects; the high-tech industries also shows new features on industrial agglomeration and the value chain. The development of high-tech industry has not only profoundly changed the structure of the world economy, but also profoundly changed the basis of international competition, and it brings much influence to the rules of economic activities. Only the measure matching the characteristics of its implementation subjects can play its role effectively, so is high-tech industrial policy. These characteristics decided that we should not imitate the traditional industrial policies while we formulate high-tech industrial policies, but should change to formulate corresponding policies at the base of its economic characteristics.In this paper I will analyze the economic characteristics of high-tech industries, point out its influence to the industry policy options and concluded that some bases to constitute high-tech industry policy. At last I summarize the advanced development experience of high-tech industries in the developed countries. Through the analysis, we hope to inspire the policy makers to constitute industry policies suited to China's national conditions and high-tech industry's development characteristics so as to promote the vigorous development of our high-tech industry. Given the limitations of my knowledge level, there might be some errors or omissions to be further learned and added in the analysis process.