Online platforms are pervasive and powerful in today's economy. We explore the increased centrality of platforms through two empirical contributions. First, we measure the extent to which platforms are insinuating themselves into the economy. We accomplish this by providing quantitative evidence of the extent to which platforms are intermediating business activities across all US service industries at the six-digit NAICS code level. Our results show that 70% of service industries, representing over 5.2 million establishments, are potentially affected by one or more platforms. Second, we...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses interwoven challenges. Defined as technology that uses advanced computation to perform at human cognitive capacity in some task area, AI must be regulated in the context of its broader toolbox - algorithms, data and platforms - and its regulation must be sector-specific. Establishing national and community priorities on how to reap AI’s benefits, while managing its social and economic risks, is an evolving debate. Digital Platform Firms are a fundamental driver of AI tools: they dominate the playing field and often pursue priorities outside the frames of...
Over the past 30 years, economic restructuring and advancements in technological innovation have allowed for the emergence of new business models that disrupt many longstanding industries. Much of the industry disruption that we see today stems from tech companies and startups that have developed a better cost-model by utilizing smart phone-enabled apps to offer simpler and less expensive products and services than those offered by competing incumbents. Uber Technologies Inc., an on-demand ridesharing service that connects passengers to local drivers in real time using smartphone...
Though economists have examined labor displacement due to digitization, few have considered the new work and value created. Unlike employment relations that brought workers together on the assembly line or in an office in a previous era, platforms enable a greater, more dispersed, and complex division of labor. New and reconfigured types of labor enabled by platforms create identification and measurement challenges. Previous studies of platforms invariably focused on specific organizational forms such as sharing or gigs. They built taxonomies based on the platform's organization –...
Up until about 10 years ago, when a person thought of fitness, health or weight loss, they did not necessarily associate those things with technology. However, as the world takes on a new digital landscape, health care industries from weight-loss to hospitals are becoming increasingly digitized. The idea behind this digitization of the health/fitness industries is that people able to quantify their health will be more likely to improve it (MacManus). Thus with the utilization of big data, big people will begin to no longer be an “epidemic” in our society. Though this is wishful thinking,...
The global Information and Communications Technologies industry has experienced a rapid, radical reorganization of industry leaders and business models—most recently in mobile. New players Apple and Google abruptly redefined the industry, bringing a wave of commoditization to carriers and equipment manufacturers. Technologies, corporate strategies, and industry structures are usually the first places to look when explaining these industry disruptions, but this paper argues that it was actually a set of political bargains during initial phases of telecommunications liberalization, which...
This presentation was first made at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico on January 14, 2014. Since then it has evolved due to comments after presentations in the U.S., Europe, and Canada.
This note is intended to help set the groundwork for a discussion of cross-national variation in responses to the emergence of labor-market platforms (LMP). The politics and policy of the labor exchanges will unfold as part of the development of the platform economy. We consider in three steps: 1) The character of the rise of the Platform Economy in an era of computing abundance; 2) The diverse array of work arrangements that are in play; 3) Whether computation intensive automation will be an increasingly powerful force in labor politics in this era....
Our basic premise is that the emergence of a platform-based economic reorganization will not dictate our future, though undoubtedly it will and is already beginning to frame the choices we are making.iv How we deploy those tools, choices that will reflect corporate strategy and public policy, will condition the society we are building. Will the Platform Economy, the reorganization of markets, enterprises, and social organization it portends, catalyze economic growth and a surge in productivity driven by a new generation of entrepreneurs? Or will the reorganization concentrate gains in the...