Technology & Innovation
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International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Al), Privacy, and Governance
ConferenceNov 30–Dec 2, 2024
This conference aims to explore important issues of economics of AI, good governance, humanization of AI technologies, privacy, considerations of creative thinking and imagination, and take a comprehensive look at the challenges and opportunities of AI technologies.
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Elon Musk and Tesla Shape America’s Future. But Problems Run Deeper Than Tweets.
Sep 19, 2024
The financialization of U.S. firms making critical products endangers both American global leadership and, in Tesla’s case, climate change progress.
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Musk and Tesla: Corporate Compensation, Financialization, and the Problem of Strategic Control
Sep 13, 2024
From the perspective of innovative enterprise, we ask how Musk might abuse his power of strategic control—and what that would mean for corporate governance reform.
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Working Paper
Tesla as a Global Competitor: Strategic Control in the EV Transition
Sep 2024
As the “Technoking” of Tesla strategizes to maintain his control over the company’s decision-making, anyone concerned with the role that Tesla will play in the evolving EV transition should be asking how CEO Musk might use, or abuse, his powerful position.
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Forget the Posturing – The Inflation Reduction Act May Work Better Than Many Expected
Aug 16, 2024
The IRA has the potential to rectify the imbalance between public benefit and private incentives
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America Needs Intel Economically and Politically—But Is It Too Late?
Aug 12, 2024
With Pat Gelsinger at the helm, Intel’s fate will be decided by whether it can revive its innovation-driven legacy or remain a cautionary tale of financial mismanagement.
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CrowdStrike Lessons: Liability Shields Fuel Risky Practices, Expert Warns
Jul 30, 2024
Cybersecurity expert Muayyad Al-Chalabi assesses CrowdStrike’s update failure and its broader implications for cybersecurity in a discussion with Lynn Parramore.
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Crying Wolf: Why Negotiating Lower Drug Prices Will Not Harm Pharmaceutical Innovation
Jul 22, 2024
Increasing evidence that the IRA is probably not harming pharmaceutical innovation.
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Working Paper
Implications of the Inflation Reduction Act for the Biotechnology Industry
Jul 2024
Sensitivity of investment and valuation to drug price indices and market conditions
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How Do Tech Innovations Really Spread? New Evidence
Jul 11, 2024
New technologies appear to yield long-lasting benefits for the pioneer locations where they were originally developed.
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Working Paper
The Diffusion of New Technologies
Jul 2024
The concentration of innovation in a handful of urban centers engenders large and persistent regional disparities in economic opportunity.
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Musk and Tesla: Compensation or Control?
Jun 18, 2024
The $48 Billion Stock-Option Package and its Implications for the EV Transition
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Antitrust Policy and Artificial Intelligence: Some Neglected Issues
Jun 10, 2024
An ensemble of mechanisms enables cloud hegemons (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) to plan the whole AI knowledge and innovation network by weaponizing interdependence in networks.
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Experts: Negotiating Big Pharma's Prices Won't Stifle Innovation—They Don't Use the Money to Innovate!
Mar 14, 2024
Industry lobbyists vehemently oppose Medicare drug price negotiations. However, physician-scientist Fred Ledley and economist William Lazonick debunk their arguments.
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LEPC VI: Ideas for Building the Future
ConferenceFeb 16–18, 2024
India: Climate Change, Technology, and Growth
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How GM’s $10-Billion Buyback May Ice Its EV Transition
Dec 18, 2023
Reindustrialization vs Financialization
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What Does Mustard Gas Have in Common with Crypto and Blockchain?
Nov 20, 2023
In his new book, Let Them Eat Crypto, Peter Howson cautions that the technologies are not just fraudulent but causing indefensible harm to both humanity and the planet.
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Jim Chanos: “The Crypto Ecosystem Is Well-Suited for the Dark Side of Finance.”
Nov 9, 2023
The famed short-seller talks Sam Bankman-Fried, why Wall Street is still so keen on crypto, and how technology is making us dumber.
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The Golden Age of AI Complementarity?
Oct 30, 2023
Recent developments in AI have added fuel to debates that have long simmered amongst economists, which could lead to a rethinking of economics itself.
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Everyone Versus Google: Will Big Tech Be Held Accountable?
Sep 28, 2023
The tech giant is in the hot seat, but it’s going to be a “big fight,” warns antitrust expert Mark Glick.
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How Shareholder Value Fixation Turns AI and Robotics into a Recipe for Failure
Sep 11, 2023
New technologies are not the problem. It’s a system distorted by a flawed ideology.
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Labor Economist: AI May Bring a Boom in Horrible Jobs
Aug 28, 2023
Losing jobs isn’t the only thing workers have to worry about. AI may make many jobs worse.
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Markets and Artificial Intelligence
Apr 24, 2023
What happens when we fuse, for the first time, artificially intelligent agents into either our market or political structures?
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Ayn Rand vs. Elinor Ostrom: The Fight for the Future of Social Media
Mar 9, 2023
The contrasting ideologies at play in this tech sector mirror the conflicting ideologies in economics
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Losing Out in Critical Technologies: Cisco Systems and Financialization
Feb 28, 2023
Cisco’s turn from innovation to financialization and what it means for the competitive position of the US information-and-communication-technology industry
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Working Paper
The Pursuit of Shareholder Value: Cisco’s Transformation from Innovation to Financialization
Feb 2023
On the dereliction of key US-based business corporations to take the lead in making the investments in organizational learning required to generate cutting-edge communication-infrastructure products.
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Sick with “Shareholder Value”: US Pharma’s Financialized Business Model During the Pandemic
Dec 6, 2022
Evidence sharply contradicts PhRMA’s contention that its member companies need unregulated drug prices to generate profits that they then reinvest in drug innovation.
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Top Antitrust Expert: We Need a New Approach to Giant Tech Firms Like Google
Nov 28, 2022
Economist Cristina Caffarra, a leader in competition and antitrust, warns that ever-expanding tech giants raise concerns about the extent of their power.
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Big Tech: Not Only Market But Also Knowledge and Information Gatekeepers
Oct 4, 2022
How do we regulate an information utility?
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Giant Tech Firms Plan to Read Your Mind and Control Your Emotions. Can They Be Stopped?
May 31, 2022
Author and law professor Maurice Stucke explains why the practices of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are so dangerous and what’s really required to rein them in. Hint: Current proposals are unlikely to work.
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Letter to SEC: How Stock Buybacks Undermine Investment in Innovation for the Sake of Stock-Price Manipulation
Apr 1, 2022
A comment on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule “Share Repurchase Disclosure Modernization”
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Working Paper
Investing in Innovation: A Policy Framework for Attaining Sustainable Prosperity in the United States
Apr 2022
Business firms are not alone in making investments in the productive capabilities required to generate innovative goods and services. Household units and government agencies also make investments in productive capabilities upon which business firms rely for their own investment activities.
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Working paper
Equality Denied: Tech and African Americans
Feb 2022
EEO-1 employment data document the vast over-representation of Asian Americans and vast under-representation of African Americans at tech companies in recent years. How did this happen?
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CIGI Celebrates 20 Years of Research and Expert Analysis
Jul 30, 2021
In 2021, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) celebrates 20 years of contributing research and expert analysis to global policy making.
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Productive Bubbles
Jul 28, 2021
Occasionally, financial speculation fastens onto transformational technologies that have the potential to create a genuinely new economy.
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Digital Transformation, Opportunity and Social Sustainability
Jun 6, 2021 | 10:30
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.
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Values: Building a Better World For All
Jun 4, 2021 | 10:30
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.
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INET at the Trento Economics Festival
ConferenceThe Return of the State: Businesses, Communities, Institutions
Jun 3–6, 2021
Watch INET at the Trento Economics Festival online
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Hijacked and Paying the Price - Why Ransomware Gangs Should be Designated as Terrorists
May 13, 2021
Ransomware gangs have been causing extensive damage. It’s time that the government takes them more seriously.
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How Lifting Intellectual Property Restrictions Could Help World Vaccinate 60% of Population by 2022
Apr 29, 2021
As new coronavirus cases surge across India, calls are growing louder for wealthy countries to loosen intellectual property restrictions
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Wikipedia’s Deep Ties to Big Tech
Apr 5, 2021
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
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Google’s Dominance of Online Ads is a Big Deal. Here’s How to Fix It.
Feb 19, 2021
Legal scholar Dina Srinivasan talks to INET’s Lynn Parramore about restoring fairness to a regulatory Wild West.
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Artificial Intelligence Could Mean Large Increases in Prosperity—But Only for a Privileged Few
Feb 18, 2021
Labor-saving advances in AI may undo the gains from globalization and pose new challenges for economic development
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Working Paper Series
Artificial Intelligence, Globalization, and Strategies for Economic Development
Feb 2021
Labor-saving advances in AI may undo the gains from globalization and pose new challenges for economic development
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The Future of Work | Economic and Social Policies for the Digital Era
Webinarmoderated by Steve Clemons with Dani Rodrik, Pavlina Tcherneva and Laura Tyson
Jan 26, 2021
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?
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The Future of Work | Are Redistribution Policies Enough?
WebinarModerated by Rana Foroohar with Gordon Hanson and Laura Tyson
Jan 12, 2021
Traditional welfare systems have emphasized the need for redistribution post-production. Are these policies sufficient in the future?
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Antitrust Spring
Dec 18, 2020
After years of amassing power, the tide is turning against the tech monopolies
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Google Monopolizes Ad Markets Through Conduct Lawmakers Prohibit in Other Electronic Trading Markets
Dec 7, 2020
A look inside the byzantine world of online ads
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The Future of Work | Meaningful Integration or Jobless Future?
Webinarwith Daron Acemoglu and William Janeway
Dec 2, 2020
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?
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The Future of Work | Who’s Not Afraid of Robots? A Comparison of National Models
Webinarmoderated by Gillian Tett with Richard Baldwin, Leif Pagrotsky
Nov 10, 2020
Some nations have embraced new technologies, while others seem ill-prepared. What accounts for this difference?
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YSI 2020 Plenary: New Economic Questions
Young Scholars Initiative Virtual Plenary
YSI
PlenaryNov 6–15, 2020
What are the 100 most pertinent economic questions facing our global societ?
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The Future of Work | The Work of Future: How Will Work Be Different?
Webinarmoderated by Steve Clemons with Erik Brynjolfsson, Nancy Folbre and Kai-Fu Lee
Oct 27, 2020
In the future, how will work be different, what jobs are most at risk, what jobs are likely to grow?
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Is This Time Different? Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Robots
Oct 14, 2020
A summary of INET’s latest Future of Work episode
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The Future of Work | Is This Time Different? Data, Artificial Intelligence & Robots
Webinarwith Jed Kolko, Shivani Nayyar and Siddharth Suri; moderated by Rob Johnson
Oct 6, 2020
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?
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What Is Technology? Enabler, Accelerator, or Displacer?
Oct 2, 2020
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.
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The Future of Work | What is Technology? Accelerator, Enabler, or Displacer?
Webinarmoderated by Katya Klinova with Long Chen, Anton Korinek and John Van Reenen
Sep 29, 2020
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?
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The Future of Work | What's at Stake?
Webinarmoderated by Steve Clemons with James Manyika and Michael Spence
Sep 22, 2020
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?
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Digital Transformation: Pre and Post Covid-19
Webinarwith Jim Balsillie
Aug 20, 2020
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.
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Is Silicon Valley Nudging Us Towards an Authoritarian Future?
Jul 29, 2020
Margaret Heffernan’s new book “Uncharted” warns against giving up the power to shape our destiny to gurus and gadgets promising false certainty.
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The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy
Webinarwith Erik Brynjolfsson | 12:00pm ET / 9:00am PT
Jul 23, 2020
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.
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Who Benefits From New Technologies?
Jun 22, 2020
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?
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Working Paper
The Geography of New Technologies
Jun 2020
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?
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The Fleming Myth and the Public Sector Contribution to Discovery and Development of New Cancer Drugs
Jun 2, 2020
Abstract, “basic science” research is essential to drug discovery. It is also largely funded by the public sector.
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COVID-19 and Surveillance Technology
Webinarwith Bruce Schneier - 12:30pm EDT / 9:30am PDT
May 29, 2020
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?
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US Digital Response to the COVID Crisis
Webinarwith Tim O’Reilly& Jennifer Pahlka | 10am PT / 1pm ET
Apr 24, 2020
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.
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Research & Policy Workshops
IMPORTANT: Due to growing concerns around the coronavirus, the INET Conference, as well as these workshops will be postponed.
YSI
WorkshopApr 13–15, 2020
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.
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Why Data Is Like Fire
Mar 11, 2020
Dr. Chen Long, Director of the Luohan Academy, explains why the digital revolution is so different from the industrial revolution
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Labor, Technology and Growth
ConferenceTowards A Gini Negative Solution
Feb 27–28, 2020
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.
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Evil is Baked into Big Tech’s Business Plan. Now What?
Dec 12, 2019
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.
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WeWork Showed Us How Badly Start-up Bros Suck—but Shareholder Rule Isn’t Better
Nov 7, 2019
To make start-ups work for everyone, we need to put power back in the hands of workers.
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Facebook, Acquisitions, and Potential Competition
Oct 21, 2019
Big Tech companies are swallowing up nascent competitors. Why aren’t regulators paying attention?
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Working Paper Series
Big Tech Acquisitions and the Potential Competition Doctrine: The Case of Facebook
Oct 2019
How antitrust law is ill-equipped to address tech mergers
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AI is Forcing Us to Rethink Economics
Aug 9, 2019
INET’s grantees and Commission on Global Economic Transformation are looking at artificial intelligence and society.
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Are We Ready to Give Up Autonomy to AI?
Jul 24, 2019
Artificial intelligence promises to make our lives easier. But is the cost losing some of our humanity?
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Why We Need to Think of AI as a Platform
May 22, 2019
Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to be a job killer—if we use it right
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The Antitrust Case Against Facebook You Need to Know About
Apr 22, 2019
“Facebook is undermining our country, our democracy.”
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Report
Technological Disruption in the Global Economy
Apr 2019
A report of the Commission on Global Economic Transformation’s subcommittee on Inequality, Technology, and the Future of Work
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Can Antitrust Law Rein in Facebook’s Data-Mining Profit Machine?
Apr 17, 2019
Facebook engaged in an elaborate bait and switch on user data: Privacy disappeared when competition did. Laws governing competition could change that.
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The Many Costs of Social Media Addiction
Mar 23, 2019
“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.
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The Future of Work Is Going to Be More Human
Mar 20, 2019
As automation takes on more routine tasks, work will become more about creativity, ethics, and empathy
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Technology: From Copycats to Innovators
Mar 19, 2019
Richard Vague looks at what it’ll take for the U.S. to win the R&D race
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Better Labor Standards Must Underpin the Future of Work
Mar 14, 2019
As technology and deregulation continue to shape the labor market, maintaining strong worker protections is as important as ever
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Commission on Global Economic Transformation
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
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The New Feudalism
Jan 9, 2019
Under the guise of “philanthropy,” business elites have an increasing grip on society
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Artha Vivaad: Innovation Economy and the State
DiscussionDec 10, 2018
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.”
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YSI @ Energy Innovation Academy
YSI
ConferenceNov 28–30, 2018
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.
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Commentary
Why We Need a Second Bretton Woods Gathering
Nov 2018
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.
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3rd Law Economics Policy Conference, 2018
ConferenceNov 26–28, 2018
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.
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Inclusive or Exclusive Global Development?
Scrutinizing Financial Inclusion
YSI
WorkshopNov 21, 2018
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.
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Apple’s “Capital Return Program”: Where Are the Patient Capitalists?
Nov 13, 2018
Instead of rewarding the taxpayers and employees who actually create value for the tech giant, Apple is doling out massive stock buybacks
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The Rise of China and the Future of Work
Oct 29, 2018
The Rise of China and the Future of WorkArtificial intelligence could replace routine jobs but allow us to “pursue dreams”
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Can AI Free Humans from ‘Routine’ Work?
Oct 10, 2018
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”
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The End of American Exceptionalism
Oct 3, 2018
“We don’t look after each other at all,” says Jeffrey Sachs on America today
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Political Economy of Capitalism
YSI
WorkshopAug 27–29, 2018
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.
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YSI Workshop: Innovation, Economic Complexity and Economic Geography
In collaboration with the Collective Learning Group at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
YSI
WorkshopAug 5–7, 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.
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The Rise of Hedge Fund Activism
Aug 3, 2018
How corporate raiders coopted “shareholder democracy” for their own ends
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Working Paper Series
The Subversion of Shareholder Democracy and the Rise of Hedge-Fund Activism
Aug 2018
This paper explains how hedge-fund activists are exerting power over corporate resourceallocation far in excess of the actual voting power of their shareholdings.
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Technology, Globalization and the Environment: Latin American Development in the XXI Century
ECLAC Summer School on the Latin American Economies
YSI
WorkshopJul 23–24, 2018
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.
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YSI Latin America Convening
YSI
Regional ConveningJul 19–21, 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.
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Jim Chanos: “Cryptocurrency is a security speculation game masquerading as a technological breakthrough”
Jun 4, 2018
The “dean of short sellers” says bitcoin is the last thing he’d want to own in the event of a catastrophe.