Since 2000, the FRBSF Economic Review has featured policy-related articles and a compendium of the Economic Research Department’s research publications and activities during the preceding year. This issue includes a special focus on the work of the Department’s new Center for the Study of Innovation and Productivity (CSIP). Two of the featured articles provide a broad overview and analysis of the recent information technology investment boom and bust, from both a national and a regional perspective. The third article, based on the keynote address at the November 2003 CSIP conference, provides a perspective on assessing the contributions of information technology and other sources of innovation to the acceleration in productivity growth since the mid-1990s. Following the articles is a brief description of the Center’s activities in 2003 and its plans for 2004, written by CSIP’s Executive Director, Fred Furlong, Vice President, Financial and Regional Research, and its Director, Mary Daly, Research Advisor.

This new Center joins the Department’s Center for Pacific Basin Monetary and Economic Studies as a locus of specialized economics expertise within the Federal Reserve System. CSIP supports a broad array of research in recognition of the diversity of the sources of innovation and the prevalence of the innovation–productivity link across sectors and through time. The scope includes macroeconomic and microeconomic research on innovation and productivity and their links to global, national, and regional economic performance and to firm and labor market behavior.

CSIP grew out of several years of effort on the part of the Economic Research Department to build expertise in the areas of innovation, technology, and productivity, topics of critical importance to the national economy and monetary policy, as well as to the Twelfth Federal Reserve District, given its prominent technology centers.

CSIP affiliates include FRBSF staff economists and visiting scholars. Their basic research appears in the Department’s Working Papers series. The Center’s activities include conferences and a Joint Seminar Series with the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University. CSIP’s website (www.frbsf.org/csip) contains links to these publications as well as data and other features for both researchers and nonspecialists.The first issue of “CSIP Notes,” a special series of the FRBSF Economic Letter, summarizes the research presented at the inaugural conference.

We are pleased to focus much of this issue of the FRBSF Economic Review on our new Center, whose work will not only enhance the analysis of Federal Reserve policy issues but also be a valuable resource to other researchers and to the public.