New lead industries have been important elements in the rise and prolongation of economic hegemonies in the past. For example, British cotton textile manufacturers were able to make profits exporting their goods all over the world in the early nineteenth century. As other countries developed cotton textile manufacturing and the profits declined, the British economy managed to stay ahead of the game by exporting the machinery that made cotton textiles, and then by moving into other capital goods sectors such as railroads and steamships. Similarly, U.S. economic hegemony after World War II was first fueled by automobile exports. After greater international competition emerged, the U.S. continued to garner technological rents by inventing, producing and exporting new products including nuclear energy equipment, military technology and information technology. Now many believe that U.S. advantages in biotechnology could substantially contribute to a new round of U.S. economic hegemony within the next two decades. This is report of an on-going research project being carried out at the Institute for Research on World-Systems at the University of California-Riverside. Our research is evaluating this contention by examining the spatio-temporal patterns of biotechnology research, development and commercialization in the world economy since 1980, as well as patterns of consumer and political resistance to some of the products of biotechnology. It is hypothesized that consumer and political resistance will affect some subsectors of the biotechnology industries differently from others. We are estimating the sizes of effects under different conditions in order to parameterize models of alternative future scenarios. Our research on historical comparisons and the quantitative nature of recent trends will allow us to estimate the probabilities of these future scenarios.
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