Professor Zysman has written has extensively on European and Japanese policy and corporate strategy; his interests also include comparative politics, Western European politics, and political economy. Professor Zysman's publications include The Highest Stakes: The Economic Foundations of the Next Security System (Oxford University Press, 1992), Manufacturing Matters: The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy (Basic Books, 1987), and Governments, Markets, and Growth: Finance and the Politics of Industrial Change (Cornell University Press, 1983).
This report examines the potential impact of Generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as ChatGPT, on the future of work and, by implication, on productivity. It argues that although Generative AI is powerful, it has significant limitations and risks that require humans to remain “in the loop” not only to prevent systems from going off the rails, but to capture value. Rather than taking a deterministic view that artificial intelligence (AI) will inevitably destroy jobs, the article suggests that an analysis should start with how firms can...
The global economy in the decades ahead will be volatile and uncertain. A first driver of the volatility and uncertainty is the reconfiguration of the global political economy reflecting what we term the new zero-sum logic of globalization and its implications for cross-border flows of goods and services. An important element of this reconfiguration is China's growing economic and geopolitical power. The goal of the US controls on semiconductor exports and outbound US investments to China is to keep China several years behind the technological frontier in this...
In a global economy defined by growing geoeconomic tensions, the platform economy has become a stage where international political and economic conflict unfolds. Aware of the power of platform firms and the risks of the platform economy, large economies are abandoning the dominant laissez faire approach in favor of strategies that differ dramatically as a function of political goals, domestic political coalitions, internal industrial structure, and available policy and market instruments. We examine the trajectories and strategies of the four largest economies: the US, the EU, China and...
In response to new developments in financial structure and technology, and galvanized by recent eruptions of volatility, officials from Washington to London to Brussels are grappling with how to regulate the cluster of practices known as decentralized finance, or DeFi. This is a political as well as an economic question. This is to say, the outcome will involve interests in addition to considerations of efficiency. Although advocates of decentralized finance often invoke laudable goals like reduced costs and increased inclusion, it is worth examining what else rides those coattails.
For the foreseeable future the global economy will be volatile.i Indeed, some would say that the only certainty in the global economy in the coming years is uncertainty. ii The challenge -- for governments, for businesses, for non-profits and for individuals -- will be to prepare for and adapt to enduring volatility and uncertainty. Agreed that there are many certainties: an accelerating climate crisis; demographic changes that will slow growth in the West and China; the increasing digitization of everything with pervasive platforms and the ever-greater capabilities of AI; and the growing...
The outlines of the impact upon work of the ever more pervasive online platforms are beginning to come into focus. Previously, fairly settled terms such as “jobs”, “employment”, “labor”, and even “work” itself are, for some, being replaced by “income generation” or “value creation”. To capture the difference between platform-organized work or labor and traditional activities, we use the commonly used term “platform work.” This raises the question of whether a different context for the way goods and services are delivered is emerging. This essay reviews the extant understanding of the...
Intensifying concerns about online platform firms’ rapid rise, expansion, and growing asymmetric power have attracted political scrutiny and undermined the legitimacy of a minimalist regulatory regime that is giving way to intense debate and increasingly interventionist governmental policies and enforcement actions. First, we view the rise of, and recent political responses to, the often-predatory power and manipulative conduct of platform firm in terms of a ‘Polanyian’ double movement in which the destabilising and destructive effects of unchecked corporate activities and market...
The new digital technologies offer remarkable opportunities to make agriculture more sustainable and contribute to the amelioration of inequality at the local and global level. And yet, digital innovations and, in particular, the adoption of platforms risk creating further distortions among and within countries. Digitalization could contribute to the further concentration of agriculture in a few giant firms and also lead to the rapid and unmanaged demise of subsistence farming as it is typically practiced in developing countries. Alternatively, if the implementation of the digital...
