BEN ARMSTRONG
  • Bio
  • Research
  • Teaching
  • Bio
  • Research
  • Teaching
BEN ARMSTRONG
Research Scientist | Interim Executive Director
Industrial Performance Center
MIT


I study how government can help cities, firms, and workers adapt to technological and industrial change. My two main projects examine the conditions under which innovation policy can succeed in the United States.

  1. At the federal level, my research examines the role of public policy in shaping how manufacturers adopt technology and train their workers. The research initiative, funded by the Department of Defense, aims to identify how the federal government can make U.S. manufacturing more productive and competitive.
  2. At the state and local level, my research traces how innovation policies in the U.S. Rust Belt have helped some places recover from the decline of U.S. manufacturing more successfully than others.

I teach courses on political economy and public policy, including Technology & Public Policy (Brown University, Spring 2020) and Reimagining Capitalism (Brown University, Fall 2020 & Fall 2019, co-taught with Richard Locke). I received my PhD from MIT in Political Science. Before graduate school, I worked at Google Inc.

(CV)

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Images (left - right):
1. Pittsburgh, 1902. Pittsburgh's rivers were a hub for the global steel industry: "Stop the mills of Pittsburgh and the industries of half the world would feel the shock." -R.L. Duffus (source: Library of Congress Geography and Maps division, accessed via Wikimedia Commons)
2. Eastman Kodak Factory, Rochester, NY, 1900. Eastman Kodak dominated the Rochester economy during the 20th Century. one account suggests that the company at its peak was responsible for as much as half of the local economic activity (source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, accessed via Wikimedia Commons).
3. Clean room in Albany, NY. Albany's nanotechnology research campus -- a partnership between the state university system and IBM -- originally focused on environmental sciences, but has since become a hub for the research and production of silicon wafers (source: IBM, accessed via Wikimedia Commons) .


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