Innovation, Digitization and Structural Change

Innovation, Digitization & Structural Change

Traditionally, technological change is always well ahead of social change—and both are typically far ahead of governmental regulatory action to manage such change. Think of online privacy laws, for instance. This section of EconPol aims to help policymakers and other decision-makers keep abreast of this most rapidly changing field, with artificial intelligence, extreme automation, and big data all poised to have major effects on economic growth and the society at large. The need for upskilling and reskilling of the workforce is a major topic as well.

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Working from Home Around the World

INSTITUTIONS ACROSS THE WORLD

Cevat Giray Aksoy, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven Davis, Mathias Dolls, Pablo Zarate

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a huge, sudden uptake in work from home, as individuals and organizations responded to contagion fears and government restrictions on commercial and social activities. Over time, it has become evident that the big shift to work from home will endure after the pandemic ends. No other episode in modern history involves such a pronounced and widespread shift in working arrangements in such a compressed time frame.

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What Works? Regional Effects of Universities

ECONOMIC POLICY AND ITS IMPACT

Nicolas Bunde, Nina Czernich, Oliver Falck, Gabriel Felbermayr

Economic research has always emphasized the importance of a well-educated population for the level and dynamics of per capita income and other key economic variables. Foreseeable demographic changes – especially the stagnation or even decline of the active labor force – make investments in the quality of human capital particularly necessary.

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European Labor Markets: How Can We Effectively Manage Technological and Structural Change?

POLICY DEBATE OF THE HOUR

Oliver Falck, Maria Savona, Tommaso Ciarli, Ed Steinmueller, Simone Vannuccini, Yuchen Guo, Christina Langer, Fabio Mercorio, Francesco Trentini, Valentin Lindlacher, Simon Wiederhold, Yvonne Giesing, Britta Rude, Florencia Jaccoud, Fabien Petit, Ron Boschma, Andreas Baur, Lisandra Flach, Isabella Gourevich, Filippo Bontadini, Valentina Meliciani, Ariel Wirkierman, Chao Ma, Zhong Zha

In this issue of the EconPol Forum, our authors discuss how Europe can more effectively address all these challenges and solve the associated labor market problems caused by rapid structural change. The authors also provide helpful policy recommendations for national governments and EU companies.

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Moving From Broad to Targeted Pandemic Fiscal Support

Heinemann, Friedrich

This paper conceptualizes an appropriate path for fiscal policy starting from the early phase of the pandemic up to the final transition to a post-pandemic new normal. Using this yardstick, it assesses the initial fiscal response of Member States. It exploits fiscal projections and program data to analyze the adjustment to the economic recovery. For loan guarantee and short-time work schemes, it identifies program-specific parameters that improve target precision and identifies examples of more and less convincing program designs.

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A Model To Think About Crypto-Assets and Central Bank Digital Currency

Hernán D. Seoane (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

This paper introduces digital assets, crypto assets in general, and Central Bank Digital Currency in particular, into an otherwise standard New-Keynesian closed economy model with Financial Frictions. We use this setting to study the impact of a change in preferences towards the use of digital assets and to address whether the emergence of this type of instruments affect the transmission of monetary policy shocks. In this context we study the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies. The model is stylized but it could be a baseline for the design of models for quantitative analysis.

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