Rising unemployment and the threat of a Moody's downgrade have highlighted the lagging economic recovery. While innovation is key to increasing U.S. global competitiveness, economists are divided over how to achieve this. Here, four experts debate policy options.

As trade flows expanded and trade agreements proliferated after World War II, governments—most notably the United States—increasingly came to use their power over imports and exports to influence the behavior of other countries.  But trade is not the only way in which nations interact economically. Over the past two decades, another form of economic exchange has risen to a level of vastly greater significance and political concern: the purchase and sale of financial assets across borders.