Lisa Sickorez, financial manager for the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), will receive the annual Marsh O'Neill staff award on Tuesday, Nov. 16, at the Faculty Club for her outstanding support and dedication to the center's directors and scholars.

Sickorez, a Stanford employee since 1993, was enthusiastically nominated by the center's co-directors and professors. CISAC, part of the Stanford Institute for International Studies, conducts research and training pertaining to international security.

As financial manager, Sickorez performs essential behind-the-scenes duties, such as moving grant proposals through the university process, ensuring funds are properly spent once they are received and participating in general strategic planning.

The award, presented by the Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Policy, honors staff who have made exceptional and enduring contributions to Stanford's research enterprise. Those who nominated Sickorez described several ways in which she applies a rare combination of quickness, accuracy and creativity to her job.

When a senior scholar last summer reported that he hoped to research the effects of arms buildup in India and Pakistan, Sickorez suggested applying for a grant from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation she had recently read about. The foundation has a similar focus, and Sickorez knew that CISAC had not tapped the organization for several years.

Another time, center co-director Scott Sagan met with a potential donor in New York who unexpectedly proposed phasing in funding over 10 years--necessitating some quick number crunching to reassess immediate financial needs.

Before the lunch meeting ended, Sickorez had faxed from her office in Encina Hall the adjusted amounts, clearly outlined in a chart for Sagan and his host to read.

"This is a dedicated staff member who can work miracles very promptly and efficiently," Sagan said. "The breadth of her interest and skills are quite stunning, and she combines them in a way that are, in my experience, highly unusual."

Sickorez came to the university as a research administrator in the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics, a program in the Department of Economics. She has held her current position at CISAC since 1998.

Part of her job, she says, is keeping abreast of potential funding sources, which she does through her "voracious" reading and online searches using keywords gleaned from research proposals. But her position also meshes well with her personal interest in current events and politics.

"I am very interested in the research that goes on at the center," she said. "It's intellectually stimulating; it's current events."

Indeed. The center's scholars include former Secretary of Defense William Perry, also a professor of management science and engineering, and Stephen Stedman, a senior fellow at the center who is currently on leave to direct research for United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Sickorez may see the center's heavy hitters only occasionally, but she says she feels like she plays an essential role at the center. She collaborates often with the various directors and says they are generous in their expressions of gratitude.

"It's a wonderful place to work," Sickorez said. "The center doesn't have much of a strict hierarchy."

Sickorez was chosen from among 21 nominees who work in the university's various academic units, central administration and Medical School. She will receive a $3,000 certificate and a plaque. Each nominee will receive a congratulatory letter from the Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Policy.

The award is named after Marshall O'Neill, former associate director of the W. W. Hansen Laboratories, who became the first recipient upon retirement in 1990. The Nov. 16 reception for the award winner begins at 4 p.m.; friends and colleagues are invited.

Are federal fiscal deficits accelerating deindustrialisation in the United States? For four decades, employment in U.S. manufacturing as a share of the labour force has fallen further and faster than in other industrial countries. In the mid-1960s, manufacturing output was 27 per cent of gross national product and manufacturing's share of employment was 24 percent. By 2003, these numbers had fallen to about 13.8 percent and 10.5 percent respectively. Employment in manufacturing remains weak, with an absolute decline of 18,000 jobs in September shown in the Labor Department's payroll survey.

At the same time, the orgy of tax-cutting, with big revenue losses, continues unabated. On October 6, House and Senate negotiators approved an expansive tax bill that showers businesses and farmers with about $145bn in rate cuts and new loopholes -- on top of what were already unprecedented fiscal deficits. These are principally financed by foreign central banks, which hold more than half the outstanding stock of US Treasury bonds. Moreover, meagre saving by American households is forcing US companies also to borrow heavily abroad.

The upshot is a current account deficit of more than $600 billion a year. America's cumulative net foreign indebtedness is about 30 percent of gross domestic product and rising fast. How will this affect manufacturing? The transfer of foreign savings to the US is embodied more in goods than in services. Outsourcing to India aside, most services are not so easily traded internationally. Thus when U.S. spending rises above output (income), the net absorption of foreign goods -- largely raw materials and manufactures -- increases. True, in this year and last the high price of oil has also boosted the current account deficit. However, since the early 1980s, the trade deficit in manufactures alone has been about as big as the current account deficit -- that is, as big as America's saving shortfall (for more detail, see http://siepr.stanford.edu).

If U.S. households' and companies' spending on manufactures is more or less independent of whether the goods are produced at home or abroad, domestic production shrinks by the amount of the trade deficit in manufactures. The consequent job loss depends on labor productivity in manufacturing, which rises strongly through time. If the trade deficit in manufactures is added back to domestic production to get "adjusted manufactured output", and labor productivity (output per person) in manufacturing stays constant, we get projected manufacturing employment. In 2003, actual manufacturing employment was just 10.5 percent of the US labor force, but it would have been 13.9 percent without a trade deficit in manufactures: the difference is 4.7m lost jobs.

In the 1980s, employment in manufacturing began to shrink substantially because of the then large current account deficit attributed to the then large fiscal deficit: Ronald Reagan's infamous twin deficits. With fiscal consolidation under Bill Clinton, the savings gap narrowed but was not closed because personal saving weakened. Now under George W. Bush, the fiscal deficit has exploded while private saving is still weak. The result is heavy borrowing from foreigners and all-time highs in the current account deficit. The main component remains the trade deficit in manufactures, intensifying the shrinkage in manufacturing jobs.

Is there cause for concern? Note that I do not suggest that the trend in overall employment has decreased, but only that its composition has tilted away from tradable goods -- largely manufactures. In the long run, growth in service employment will largely offset the decline in manufacturing. However, the rate of technical change in manufacturing is higher than in other sectors. It is hard to imagine the US sustaining its technological leadership with no manufacturing sector at all.

More uncomfortably, more Congressmen, pundits and voters feel justified in claiming that foreigners use unfair trade practices to steal U.S. jobs, particularly in manufacturing, and hence in urging protectionism. The irony is that, if imports were somehow greatly reduced, this would prevent the transfer of foreign saving to the United States and lead to a credit crunch, with a possibly even greater loss of US jobs.

The answer is not tariffs, exchange rate changes or subsidies to manufacturing that further increase the fiscal deficit. The proper way of reducing protectionist pressure and relieving anxiety about U.S. manufacturing is for the government to consolidate its finances and move deliberately towards running surpluses -- in short, to eliminate the U.S. economy's saving deficiency.