Technology & Innovation

In 2021, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) celebrates 20 years of contributing research and expert analysis to global policy making.

Occasionally, financial speculation fastens onto transformational technologies that have the potential to create a genuinely new economy.

The governance of technology is a new challenge. The Recovery Plans is encouraging the digital transformation of our economies. An acceleration of technological change is bound to deeply affect labor markets and income distribution. While labor-market adaptation is likely to stave off permanent high unemployment, it cannot be counted on to prevent a sharp rise in inequality.

Our world is full of fault lines—growing inequality in income and opportunity; systemic racism; health and economic crises from a global pandemic; mistrust of experts; the existential threat of climate change; deep threats to employment in a digital economy with robotics on the rise. These fundamental problems and others like them stem from a common crisis in values.

Watch INET at the Trento Economics Festival online

Ransomware gangs have been causing extensive damage. It’s time that the government takes them more seriously.

As new coronavirus cases surge across India, calls are growing louder for wealthy countries to loosen intellectual property restrictions

Contrary to its image as a cash-strapped, transparent public service, Wikipedia is a wealthy NGO with close ties to big tech companies that it tries to obscure

Legal scholar Dina Srinivasan talks to INET’s Lynn Parramore about restoring fairness to a regulatory Wild West.

Labor-saving advances in AI may undo the gains from globalization and pose new challenges for economic development

Labor-saving advances in AI may undo the gains from globalization and pose new challenges for economic development

Given the mounting need to create good jobs, effect structural change, and transform the economy, what should policy priorities be in the digital era? Is there a role for industrial policy? What new policy options do we need to achieve inclusive prosperity?

Traditional welfare systems have emphasized the need for redistribution post-production. Are these policies sufficient in the future?

After years of amassing power, the tide is turning against the tech monopolies

A look inside the byzantine world of online ads

The central challenge confronting us in the future of work is this: can we create a future where work exists for all who need one with fair rewards, or will we end up on the path of increasing displacement, leaving workers vulnerable, dispensable, and miserable?

Some nations have embraced new technologies, while others seem ill-prepared. What accounts for this difference?

What are the 100 most pertinent economic questions facing our global societ?

In the future, how will work be different, what jobs are most at risk, what jobs are likely to grow?

A summary of INET’s latest Future of Work episode

Are there aspects of modern technology, made possible by unprecedented computing power and connectivity, that make them distinctively different from previous eras? If so, what are the implications?

Technology has coevolved with human societies and played critical roles in past social and economic transformations. From the invention of steam engines to the use of electricity, technological changes were responsible for boosting productivity gains and increasing standards of living. But what really is technology? Is it an external force outside our control, or do we have a say in its direction, development, and deployment? These questions were undoubtedly made more urgent with the rapid advancement in digital technologies of late.

Human societies have always coevolved with technology, but how can we think of technology? Is it an external force outside our control, or do we have a say in its direction, development and deployment?

Advancements in automation and artificial intelligence are quickly reaching tipping points, yet our policies, institutions and mindsets are woefully outdated. What will work look like in the future, and how do we secure a future that works for all?

The rise of the Knowledge Based Economy and subsequent Data Driven Economy has created a new world in which the basis of wealth and power is derived from control of these intangible assets, alongside creating a new kind of social and political space in which both our public and private spheres are technologically reshaped. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated these transformations that permeate our world and has amplified their effects.

Margaret Heffernan’s new book “Uncharted” warns against giving up the power to shape our destiny to gurus and gadgets promising false certainty.

Technology has played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitating remote work and automating certain pandemic responses. But it has also accelerated technological adoption, and the “future of work” may now be the present.

Do the benefits of new technologies accrue primarily to inventors, early investors, and highly skilled users, or to society more widely as their adoption generates employment growth?

Rising inequality has focused attention on the benefits of new technologies. Do these accrue primarily to inventors, early investors, and highly skilled users, or to society more widely as their adoption generates employment growth?

Technology has played a central role in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But that has come with increased risks to privacy. How do we balance our needs for safety, convenience and privacy in the wake of this crisis?

As the COVID crisis threatens to overwhelm both federal and state government services, getting the digital component of government services to function effectively is mission critical.

IMPORTANT: Due to growing concerns around the coronavirus, the INET Conference, as well as these workshops will be postponed. Applicants will soon be provided further information.

Dr. Chen Long, Director of the Luohan Academy, explains why the digital revolution is so different from the industrial revolution

What will empower a worker to be able to make greater demands on a profitable economy or employer? The answer may be summed up in one word: leverage.

In her new book, Don’t Be Evil, Rana Foroohar explores how to confront companies like Google and their under-regulated stampede over all of us.

To make start-ups work for everyone, we need to put power back in the hands of workers.

Big Tech companies are swallowing up nascent competitors. Why aren’t regulators paying attention?

How antitrust law is ill-equipped to address tech mergers

INET’s grantees and Commission on Global Economic Transformation are looking at artificial intelligence and society.

Artificial intelligence promises to make our lives easier. But is the cost losing some of our humanity?

Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to be a job killer—if we use it right

“Facebook is undermining our country, our democracy.”

A report of the Commission on Global Economic Transformation’s subcommittee on Inequality, Technology, and the Future of Work

Facebook engaged in an elaborate bait and switch on user data: Privacy disappeared when competition did. Laws governing competition could change that.

“Founding father” of virtual reality explores the ways digital platforms change economic relationships Computer scientist Jaron Lanier explains the uneasy relationship between an analog world and a corporate digital infrastructure.

As automation takes on more routine tasks, work will become more about creativity, ethics, and empathy

Richard Vague looks at what it’ll take for the U.S. to win the R&D race

As technology and deregulation continue to shape the labor market, maintaining strong worker protections is as important as ever

Chaired by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence, INET has assembled a global team of leaders and scholars calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

Under the guise of “philanthropy,” business elites have an increasing grip on society

A panel discussion on the importance of the role of the state alongside private enterprise to encourage innovative entrepreneurship, productivity and economic growth in an “Innovation Economy.”

The FSR Energy Innovation Area and the Complexity Economics Working Group of the Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) have the pleasure to invite you to participate in the 1st Energy Innovation Academy.

We need a new system of rules for the digital 21st century that enhances global digital cooperation and welfare. Nothing less than a historic gathering of the world’s key decision makers will get us there.    

Organized by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi in collaboration with the Institute of New Economic Thinking, New York, the aim of the Law Economics Policy Conference series is to bring together legal, economic, and public policy thinkers to consider a variety of real world issues in India in a holistic manner.

Microfinance and then financial inclusion have become buzzwords in international development. Such initiatives have mobilised and generated  large amounts of development funding, despite substantial amount of critique. Such critiques call for a more impartial assessment of the effectiveness of financial inclusion on the grounds that funds for microfinance, they argue, displaced development spendings on healthcare, education or infrastructure. In addition, the focus on expansion of financial markets to ‘bank’ and financially ‘include’ the poor may divert attention from more comprehensive and effective poverty reduction strategies. Critiques of this ‘way of doing development’ are often sidelined and labelled as ‘extreme’, ‘sloppy’ or ideology-driven rather than evidence-based. We believe that there is a need for contemporary development scholars from all disciplines to engage in those debates. This half-day workshop would bring in such scholars to discuss what we have learned from a decade of research on the microfinance, and how financial inclusion and the emergence of fintech may offer new opportunities - as well as risks - in for inclusive global development. 

Instead of rewarding the taxpayers and employees who actually create value for the tech giant, Apple is doling out massive stock buybacks

The Rise of China and the Future of WorkArtificial intelligence could replace routine jobs but allow us to “pursue dreams”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to replace routine jobs, says Dr. Kai-Fu Lee. But done right, that process could allow us to “pursue dreams, spend time with our loved ones and find out why we exist as humans”

“We don’t look after each other at all,” says Jeffrey Sachs on America today

The Economics of Innovation Working group and the Economic History Working Group together with the Département d’histoire, économie et société at the University of Geneva, are launching the event Political Economy of Capitalism to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, on 27-28-29 August 2018.

The workshop aims to bring together experienced researchers with young scholars in the fields of Innovation, Economic Complexity and Economic Geography to understand knowledge accumulation and spillovers through products, people and places. Those interested in interdisciplinary research, especially bridging a gap between these topics are strongly encouraged to apply. 

How corporate raiders coopted “shareholder democracy” for their own ends

This paper explains how hedge-fund activists are exerting power over corporate resourceallocation far in excess of the actual voting power of their shareholdings.

The Latin America Working Group and the Keynesian Economic Working Group of the Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) of the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) are hosting the workshop “Technology, Globalization and the Environment: Latin American Development in the XXI Century” to be held at the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-ECLAC) in Santiago de Chile on the 23-24 July 2018.

Young Scholars based in Latin America are invited to convene in Buenos Aires. The event serves to strengthen the Latin American network of new economic thinkers pursuing a new economic paradigm. Attendees will be able to enjoy several partner events during the same week.

The “dean of short sellers” says bitcoin is the last thing he’d want to own in the event of a catastrophe.

As in previous years, young scholars will come together in Trento during the annual Festival dell’Economia. This gathering will serve as the YSI Europe Convening for 2018. Attendees will have the opportunity to share their work with YSI members from across Europe, while also partaking in the Festival dell’Economia. 

Alberto Baccini’s presentation for INET’s panel on research evaluation at the G20 Global Solutions Summit in Berlin, May 2018.

Bill Janeway explains why “efficiency is the enemy of innovation,” and how venture capitalists and the state advance technological change

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Mariana Mazzucato argues that the idea that entrepreneurship is confined to the private sector is wrong.

In the face of  laissez-faire capitalism at home and resurgent nationalism across the globe, INET offers an innovative look at the causes of—and solutions for—the problems that ail a fissuring world economy.

Economist Morton Schapiro, president of Northwestern University, and his colleague, literary critic and Slavic studies scholar Saul Morson, argue that—contrary to popular belief—studying the humanities is the key to not getting outsourced.

The shocking—but illustrative—example of how an Italian government agency concocted statistics to evaluate scholarship, hid them from the public, and masqueraded them as science. It’s a growing phenomenon

Sen. Tammy Baldwin features arguments in questions to SEC nominees, pharmaceutical industry witness

We examine the hypothesis that the slowdown in productivity following the Great Recession was in significant part an endogenous response to the contraction in demand that induced the downturn.

A discussion with Steven M. Fazzari, INET Grantee and the Bert A. & Jeanette L. Lynch Distinguished Professor of Economics, Washington University.

The World Economic Roundtable seeks to help the business, investment, and policy communities understand ongoing changes in the world economy and to promote a discussion of ideas that can advance the goal of a widely shared global prosperity.

Austerity measures have battered the region and created instability throughout the Eurozone. Here’s one way out of the mess.

“The stories we tell ourselves about the world are a map of the world as we see it. And if we want to change the world, we have to change the story first.”

A discussion with Michael Grubb, INET Grantee and Professor of Energy and Climate Change at University College of London.

The Implications of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative for China and the World Economy

We want an economy that generates stable and equitable growth—or what I call “sustainable prosperity.” We want productivity growth that makes it possible for the population to have higher living standards over time. We want an equitable sharing of the gains from productivity growth among those whose work efforts and financial resources contribute to that growth. And we want sufficient job stability to enable workers to remain in productive employment for some four decades at work while providing them with enough savings to provide them with adequate incomes over some two decades of retirement.

Building symbiotic public-private partnerships

What Do Citations Actually Measure in Economics and How Should Economic Journals and Department Review Committees Use This Data? 

Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence and a global team of leading thinkers are calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

Growing income inequality is threatening the American middle class, and the middle class is vanishing before our eyes. We are still one country, but the stretch of incomes is fraying the unity of our nation.

The Precariat under Rentier Capitalism Guy Standing We are in the midst of a Global Transformation, analogous to Karl Polanyi’s Great Transformation described in his seminal 1944 book. Whereas Polanyi’s Transformation was about constructing national market systems, today’s is about the painful construction of a global market system. To use Polanyi’s term, the ‘dis-embedded’ phase has been dominated by an ideology of market liberalisation, commodification and privatisation, orchestrated by financial interests, as in his model. The similarities also extend to today’s fundamental challenge, how to construct a ‘re-embedded’ phase, with new systems of regulation, distribution and social protection.

“Dual Economy” models were developed to explain growth in the developing world. Now they appear necessary to comprehend the high income trap that afflicts the world’s most developed economies.

INET gathered hundreds of new economic thinkers in Edinburgh to discuss the past, present, and future of the economics profession.

The Festival for New Economic Thinking is a collaborative initiative of several organizations, and aims to bring together those who seek to improve how economics is taught, studied and practiced. 

The Idea That Businesses Exist Solely to Enrich Shareholders Is Harmful Nonsense

The Theory of the Firm, Financial Flows, and Economic Performance

The YSI Economics of Innovation Working Group in partnership with the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology is hosting a YSI Conference on “Innovation, Institutions and Governance”.

Why we should worry about job quality, not quantity—or robot overlords

The prevailing stock market ideology enriches value extractors, not value creators

The YSI Latin America Working Group is hosting a workshop at the United Nations ECLAC Summer School on Latin American economies.