ABOUT BRIE
The Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE), located on the University of California, Berkeley campus in the San Francisco Bay Area near Silicon Valley, was founded on the premise that there can be no long-term, low-tech prosperity for the American economy. Continued leadership in the development, production, and adoption of new technologies in the United States is the key to America’s economic health. BRIE research has shown that national comparative advantage is created not revealed, that high-tech trade patterns are massively influenced by domestic policies, that what a nation produces and trades – the composition of domestic production – matters mightily for growth and security.
More recently, BRIE has turned its attention to the implications of what we termed, the “Platform Economy”, which was driven by the rapid, pervasive spread of information technologies to work and competition, both domestically and globally. Although new forms of competition create dramatic potential for economic growth and job creation, they also threaten to generate new stresses in the uneasy relationship between industry, society, and government. Such findings are reflected in BRIE’s ongoing analyses of industrial and digital production and market competition in Asia, Europe, and the United States. For example, recent BRIE research includes assessments of the impacts of changing patterns of global trade and investment and the political and economic impacts of the development and deployment of new digital technologies on work, competition, and society.
All BRIE research is firmly grounded in a detailed, real-world understanding of technologies, markets, strategies, and policies. Our research typically starts from an examination of specific case studies of industries and institutions – who is doing what, who is winning and losing in the market, and why – before generalizing to hypotheses, which are then tested in a variety of ways. BRIE is dedicated to engaged scholarship that influences policy and strategy. Today, as a non-partisan, university-based organization, BRIE is a respected voice in business and policy circles in Silicon Valley, Washington, Europe, and Asia.