Competing Capitalisms, Policy, and Governance

BRIE research has shown that the major industrialized economies are structured differently, imparting to each particular advantages and disadvantages in producing goods and services. A myriad of market institutions and linkages that tie together activities, people, and organizations act to create distinctive production environments that are quite different from simple packages of factors of production.

The major industrialized economies are distinct, organized around and by very different internal domestic market logics and political structures. They therefore exhibit major asymmetries – especially in access to markets and technology, the kind and quality of local production and technical capabilities, and the role of direct foreign investment. Distinctive national tales of development are an integral part of the global story. Such findings are reflected in BRIE's on-going analyses of industrial production and market competition in Asia , Europe and the U.S. , and in its assessments of the changing patterns of global trade and investment and of the economic impacts of the development and use of new technologies such as advanced information networks. Again and again the waves of innovation that disturb global markets are rooted in the enduring national structures. The significance of the national stories is amplified and the impact of the consequences accelerated by global markets. An increasingly global market coexists with enduring national foundations of distinctive national economic growth trajectories and corporate strategies.

BRIE’s ongoing research asks how these asymmetries affect industrial competition and geopolitics. For example, BRIE’s work on advanced telecommunications, which began in cooperation with the OECD, explores how- and how successfully- firms subject to different national regulatory environments used information technology for competitive advantage. Similarly, BRIE publication The Highest Stakes explores the consequence of regional differences in industrial and technological power for U.S. security interests in a post-cold war era.

BRIE research analyzes policy areas crucial to fostering innovation and economic growth, research and development, the development and deployment of network infrastructure, financial markets, corporate governance, and labor market policies. Though the new forms of competition create dramatic new potential for economic growth and job creation, they also threaten to generate new stresses in the uneasy relationship between industry, society and government. As the marketplaces for goods and services are enlarged, corporate governance and the outsourcing and the movement off-shore of services and software suddenly becomes an international question. BRIE also analyses the challenges in those areas of policy and law that define property and markets themselves, and thus the foundations of the technology-driven networked economy: intellectual property, competition, and telecommunications policies. We examine the policy problems created as a consequence of digital networks. Digital technologies cast both security and privacy in new lights, potentially alter trade-offs among them, and blur into concerns about the instruments and means of cyber-security. Attention to security policy development and engaging consensus building amongst the players on these issues is thus key. Finally, we consider the emerging international aspects of policymaking as networks span the globe, complicating problems of seamless interconnection and raising issues of national security. Here the project analyses patterns of international regulatory cooperation underlying the formulations of international rules and standards in the new information markets. We look at the regulatory interfaces that permit the interoperability of distinct regulatory regimes and the associated trade-offs with respect to transparency, accountability, legitimacy, data privacy, and security. All of these will vary from nation to nation.