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32. Digitalisation and European welfare states
- Author:
- Georgios Petropoulos
- Publication Date:
- 06-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Bruegel
- Abstract:
- EU policymakers must find answers to pressing questions: if technology has a negative impact on labour income, how will the welfare state be funded? How can workers’ welfare rights be adequately secured? A team of Bruegel scholars, with the support of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, has taken on these questions
- Topic:
- International Security and Digital Economy
- Political Geography:
- Europe
33. Why “Leapfrogging” in Frontier Markets Isn’t Working
- Author:
- Bright Simons
- Publication Date:
- 03-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Just before the yuletide of 2018, I arrived in my native Ghana after one of my long spells away. I flipped out my phone, opened Uber, and tried to flag a ride from inside the shiny new terminal of Accra’s international airport. After a couple of false starts I gave up, walked out, and headed for the taxi stand. In the many days that followed, this ritual repeated itself with remarkable regularity. Sometimes I got the Uber, but on as many occasions, I couldn’t. The reasons for the frequent failure ranged from curious to bizarre. The “partner-drivers” would accept the request. Then they would begin to go around in circles. Sometimes they would start heading in the opposite direction. On a few occasions they would call and announce that they were “far away,” even though their registered location was visible to me on the app and their estimated time of arrival had factored into my decision to wait. It would take me a whole week to figure out that the problem wasn’t always that many Ghanaian Uber drivers couldn’t use GPS all that well, or that they were displeased with fares. There were other issues that I’d left out of my calculation, such as my payment preference, which was set to “bank card” instead of “cash.” The drivers want cash because it allows them to unofficially “borrow” from Uber and remit Uber’s money when it suits their cashflow. Though Uber offers two tiers of service, the difference in quality appeared negligible. Even on the upper tier, it was a constant struggle to find an Uber whose air conditioner hadn’t “just stopped working earlier today.” As something of a globetrotter used to seamless Uber services in European and American cities, I found the costs of onboarding onto Uber as my main means of mobility in Accra onerous. Why is a powerful corporation like Uber, reportedly valued by shrewd investment bankers at $120 billion, with $24 billion in capital raised, unable to maintain even a relative semblance of quality in its product in Ghana? And in other African cities I have visited? It may seem bleedingly obvious why heavily digitalised Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google manage to deliver fairly uniform standards of product quality regardless of where their customers are based, whilst Uber, because of its greater “embeddedness in local ecosystems” and lower digitalisation of its value chain, fails. But in that seemingly redundant observation enfolds many explanations for why the innovation-based leapfrogging narrative in frontier markets, especially in Africa, unravels at close quarters.
- Topic:
- Development, Science and Technology, Governance, Digital Economy, and Emerging Technology
- Political Geography:
- Africa
34. Rethinking Cybersecurity Strategy, Mass Effect, and States
- Author:
- James Andrew Lewis
- Publication Date:
- 01-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- Despite all the attention, cyberspace is far from secure. Why this is so reflects conceptual weaknesses as much as imperfect technologies. Two questions highlight shortcomings in the discussion of cybersecurity. The first is why, after more than two decades, we have not seen anything like a cyber Pearl Harbor, cyber 9/11, or cyber catastrophe, despite constant warnings. The second is why, despite the increasing quantity of recommendations, there has been so little improvement, even when these recommendations are implemented. These questions share an answer: the concepts underlying cybersecurity are an aggregation of ideas conceived in a different time, based on millennial expectations about governance and international security. Similarly, the internet of the 1990s has become “cyber,” a portmanteau term that encompassed the broad range of global economic, political, and military activities transformed by the revolution created by digital technologies. If our perceptions of the nature of cybersecurity are skewed, so are our defenses. This report examines the accuracy of our perceptions of cybersecurity. It attempts to embed the problem of cyber attack (not crime or espionage) in the context of larger strategic calculations and effects. It argues that policies and perceptions of cybersecurity are determined by factors external to cyberspace, such as political trends affecting relations among states, by thinking on the role of government, and by public attitudes toward risk. We can begin to approach the problem of cybersecurity by defining attack. While public usage calls every malicious action in cyberspace an attack, it is more accurate to define attacks as those actions using cyber techniques or tools for violence or coercion to achieve political effect. This places espionage and crime in a separate discussion (while noting that some states use crime for political ends and rampant espionage creates a deep sense of concern among states). Cyber attack does not threaten crippling surprise or existential risk. This means that the incentives for improvement that might motivate governments and companies are, in fact, much smaller than we assume. Nor is cyber attack random and unpredictable. It reflects national policies for coercion and crime. Grounding policy in a more objective appreciation of risk and intent is a first step toward better security.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Governance, Cybersecurity, and Digital Economy
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
35. Caribbean Economies and the Year Ahead 2018
- Author:
- Scott MacDonald
- Publication Date:
- 01-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- Caribbean economies face 2018 with mixed prospects. While overall trends are positive for most countries, a number of economies are still struggling from the damage sustained during last year’s hurricane season. The positive forces at work are a stronger global economic expansion, improving prospects for tourism, development of the oil industry in the Guiana Shield, and a strengthening in commodity prices. On the negative side are the costs of reconstruction, ongoing fiscal pressures in a handful of states, and the increasing negative consequences of an imploding Venezuela. Significant questions continue to exist as to U.S. policy in the region, spillover of Brexit, Chinese Caribbean policy, and a rising level of Russian engagement in some countries. In all of this, the Caribbean remains vulnerable to events external to the region and increasingly needs to focus on digital technology and how it can be applied to make local economies more competitive. During much of 2017, growth prospects were generally positive, helped along by a stronger expansion in the advanced economies, stabilization in commodity prices, and a higher level of remittances from the Caribbean diaspora. The Dominican Republic led the way, though at a slower pace than the year prior due to efforts to reduce the fiscal deficit. Better tourist numbers also lifted growth prospects in much of the Eastern Caribbean and Jamaica. The laggards were Puerto Rico (with a $72 billion debt crisis), the U.S. Virgin Islands (dealing with acute fiscal pressures), Barbados (struggling with deteriorating public finances and reduced capital market access), and commodity exporters Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. While most Caribbean countries and dependencies were fortunate to avoid massive destruction during the 2017 hurricane season, storms Irma and Maria brought considerable disruption to Barbuda, Dominica, St. Martin (both the French and Dutch sides), the British Virgin Islands, and U.S. Virgins Islands. Category 5 Hurricane Maria in September was the worst natural disaster on record in Dominica and certainly ranks in the top 10 for Puerto Rico. Indeed, both Dominica and Puerto Rico were left effectively without economies.
- Topic:
- Oil, Natural Disasters, Tourism, Digital Economy, and Global Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Caribbean, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Barbados, and Puerto Rico
36. Intellectual Property and the International Trade Commission An Examination of the Role of the ITC in Protecting IP Rights
- Author:
- William Alan Reinsch and Jonathan Robinson
- Publication Date:
- 06-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 has been a powerful tool for protecting U.S. intellectual property (IP) rights and the U.S. market from unfair competition for nearly 100 years. The statute empowers the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to ban imports of goods that inappropriately use U.S. intellectual property. Since it was last amended in 1988, however, new issues have emerged with the law and the Commission’s role in enforcing its provisions. As the economy modernizes and intellectual property enters the digital realm, we examine the ITC and its role in enforcing IP rights and suggest possible ways the ITC can modernize its operations to better confront the challenges of the twenty-first century.
- Topic:
- Intellectual Property/Copyright, Digital Economy, Trade, and Modernization
- Political Geography:
- United States and North America
37. Governance Innovation for a Connected World: Protecting Free Expression, Diversity and Civic Engagement in the Global Digital Ecosystem
- Author:
- Centre for International Governance Innovation
- Publication Date:
- 07-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for International Governance Innovation
- Abstract:
- Worldwide, the internet and the increasingly important social media and content applications and platforms running on it have assumed an extraordinary and powerful role in people’s lives and become defining features of present-day life. This global digital ecosystem has created immeasurable benefits for free expression, social and cultural exchange, and economic progress. Yet, its impacts, and the easy access to content it provides, have not all been either foreseeable or desirable, as even a cursory scan of the daily news will show. In this environment, the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University and the Centre for International Governance Innovation, in cooperation with the Department of Canadian Heritage, invited government, business, academic and civil society experts to an international working meeting in March 2018 to explore governance innovations aimed at protecting free expression, diversity of content and voices, and civic engagement in the global digital ecosystem. One of the goals was to bring different players and perspectives together to explore their similarities within a comparative public policy context. This publication reports on the meeting’s discussion as participants sought innovative approaches to deal with both present and emerging challenges, without impeding the creativity and benefits that the internet can bring.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Governance, Digital Economy, and Engagement
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
38. Rethinking Industrial Policy for the Data-driven Economy
- Author:
- Dan Ciuriak
- Publication Date:
- 10-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for International Governance Innovation
- Abstract:
- This paper reviews industrial policy in theory and historical practice. It makes the case for a fundamental reframing based on the centrality of data to the data-driven digital economy, the various roles that data plays in this economy (as a medium of digital transactions, as intangible capital and as infrastructure of a digitized economy), and the heightened scope for market failure in the data-driven economy. A number of points to guide the formation of industrial and innovation policy in the knowledge-based and data-driven digital economy are suggested. As part of their data strategies, countries should assess the market value of data generated in the exercise of public sector governance and data generated in Canadian public space; put in place procedures to capture data and regulate its capture; and use procurement to develop new capabilities in the private sector.
- Topic:
- Industrial Policy, Infrastructure, Governance, and Digital Economy
- Political Geography:
- Canada and North America
39. Data Is Different: Why the World Needs a New Approach to Governing Cross-border Data Flows
- Author:
- Susan Ariel Aaronson
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for International Governance Innovation
- Abstract:
- Companies, governments and individuals are using data to create new services such as apps, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. These data-driven services rely on large pools of data and a relatively unhindered flow of data across borders (few market access or governance barriers). The current approach to governing cross-border data flows through trade agreements has not led to binding, universal or interoperable rules governing the use of data. Most countries with significant data-driven firms are in the process of debating how to regulate these services and the data that underpins them. But many developing countries are not able to participate in that debate. Policy makers must devise a more effective approach to regulating trade in data for four reasons: the unique nature of data as an item exchanged across borders; the sheer volume of data exchanged; the fact that much of the data exchanged across borders is personal data; and the fact that although data could be a significant source of growth, many developing countries are unprepared to participate in this new data-driven economy and to build new data-driven services. This paper begins with an overview and then describes how trade in data is different from trade in goods or services. It then examines analogies used to describe data as an input, which can help us understand how data could be regulated. Next, the paper discusses how trade policy makers are regulating trade in data and how these efforts have created a patchwork. Finally, it suggests an alternative approach.
- Topic:
- Digital Economy, Internet, and International Community
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
40. Industrial Relations and Social Dialogue in the Age of the Collaborative Economy (IRSDACE).
- Author:
- Luis Fernando Medina Sierra
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Fundación Alternativas
- Abstract:
- The present document has three goals: first, present an overview of the main legal and regulatory developments regarding the digital platforms; second, reflect the diversity of view that these technologies have generated among the social actors (unions, workers, government and enterprises) and third, offer a comparative framework to make sense of this diversity and the challenges it presents for labor relations and social dialogue. The institutional response has been so far mainly reactive, giving rise to ambiguities that may generate conflicts in need of resolution. But the structure of the different industries where these platforms have been introduced is such that the workers' experiences, their opportunities and their incentives to organize are all markedly heterogeneous. Given the way in which digital platforms redefines the labor relationship between workers and companies, any possible regulation will entail a serious rethinking of key aspects of the welfare state.
- Topic:
- Human Welfare, Labor Issues, Regulation, and Digital Economy
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Spain, Western Europe, and Mediterranean