Nobel laureate stresses need to develop software

A visiting American Nobel laureate in economics yesterday advised the nation's information technology industries to develop "high-tech" software.

"It's important for Taiwan to focus on development of software," Lawrence Klein, who won the Nobel Prize in 1980, said in a speech in Taipei.

During his presentation, entitled "US information technology and productivity growth -- their relevance to Taiwan's economic development," Klein said that his study showed software industries contributed to long-term productivity gains in the US.

He said a 10 percent increase in all input generates a 16.86 percent increase in goods output, adding that US productivity growth was not solely for the export of software, but also for domestic use.

The production value of Taiwan's software was NT$13.5 billion last year and the figure is expected to grow 113.4 percent to NT$28.8 billion this year, the government-funded Market Intelligence Center (市場情報中心) said last month.

Klein said Taiwan should focus on moving to more sophisticated software, or "high-tech" software, which could also be used to make the domestic economy more efficient, he said.

Klein, born in 1920, earned his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, constructed the Wharton Econometric Forecasting Model in the 1960s and later founded Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates (now Global Insight).

In 1976, Klein was coordinator of former US president Jimmy Carter's economic task force. Although Klein declined to join Carter's administration, he served as a member of the president's council of economic advisers.