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Digital Economics & Policy

News: The Janeway Institute has launched!

 

See our first workshop findings

Topic 1: Applied Digital Economics & Policy Workshop: Construction and Infrastructure

 

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The Bennett Institute / Janeway Institute Digital Economics & Policy Initiative

Welcome to the Bennett Institute / Janeway Institute Digital Economics & Policy Initiative. As the impact of digital technologies continues to extend across the economy and society, this initiative will convene academics, practitioners and policymakers to shape an agenda for research and policy across different domains of knowledge and practice. The reach of the technologies covered is broad and spans existing policy silos. Our intention is to host a joint endeavour drawing on different sources of expertise and experiences in order to shape more effective policies.

This project will examine the interaction between digital economics and public policy to address the growing size and scope of digital enterprises, the rising challenges to international cooperation and policy development, as well as to help narrow the distance between academic research and public discourse.

 

Recent Publications


Tracking the COVID-19 Crisis with High-Resolution Transaction Data

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This working paper uses high-frequency / high-resolution transaction data from BBVA, the second-largest bank in Spain, to analyse the dynamics of expenditure in Spain during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The transaction data under study captures many salient patterns in how an economy reacts to shocks in real time.

The Idea of Productivity

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Ideas fundamentally drive productivity, and hence living standards, over the long term. Ideas can contribute to innovative products and services, or to new ways of organising production and consumption. A knowledge-based economy is one of virtuous or vicious circles, with policies playing an important co-ordinating role. This paper highlights key parts of the literature and sets out future areas for research.

 

 

 

Cogs and Monsters: How economics needs to adapt to solve the world’s crisis

Digital technology, big data, machine learning and AI are revolutionizing both the tools of economics and the phenomena it seeks to measure, understand, and shape. Mainstream economics, Coyle says, still assumes people are “cogs”—self-interested, calculating, independent agents interacting in defined contexts. But the digital economy is much more characterized by “monsters”—untethered, snowballing, and socially influenced unknowns. What is worse, by treating people as cogs, economics is creating its own monsters, leaving itself without the tools to understand the new problems it faces.

Coyle asks whether economic individualism is still valid in the digital economy, whether we need to measure growth and progress in new ways, and whether economics can ever be objective, since it influences what it analyzes.

How should the theories, tools and techniques of economics adapt better to understand the nature of modern digital economies? This book explores the enormous problems and opportunities facing economics today if it is to respond effectively to these dizzying changes.

 

 

Uber and Beyond: Policy implications for the UK

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Following the recent UK Supreme Court judgement on Uber’s employment model and the global legal and regulatory pressures on the broader platform business model, this policy brief explores the implications of these developments for work and productivity in the UK economy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Workshops

Our first workshop covered the policy implications of digital economics in construction and infrastructure markets

Topic 1: Construction and Infrastructure, July 2021

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