From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design

As the recent financial crisis showed, today there is a strong need to gain "ecological perspective" of all relevant interactions in socio-economic-techno-environmental systems. For this, we suggested to set-up a network of Centers for integrative systems design, which shall be able to run all potentially relevant scenarios, identify causality chains, explore feedback and cascading effects for a number of model variants, and determine the reliability of their implications (given the validity of the underlying models). They will be able to detect possible negative side effect of policy decisions, before they occur. The Centers belonging to this network of Integrative Systems Design Centers would be focused on a particular field, but they would be part of an attempt to eventually cover all relevant areas of society and economy and integrate them within a "Living Earth Simulator". The results of all research activities of such Centers would be turned into informative input for political Decision Arenas. For example, Crisis Observatories (for financial instabilities, shortages of resources, environmental change, conflict, spreading of diseases, etc.) would be connected with such Decision Arenas for the purpose of visualization, in order to make complex interdependencies understandable to scientists, decision-makers, and the general public.Comment: 34 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

Agility and Information Technology Diffusion in the Semiconductor Industry

New product development in the semiconductor industry is characterized by products with a high level of intellectual property content, and ever-decreasing product development cycles, designed by very scarce engineering talent. The foundation of the success of many semiconductor companies is their ability to respond quickly to turbulent market conditions. This ability is contingent on intra-organizational and interorganizational factors, which will be described in this paper. Firms are attempting to overcome these agility-related challenges by developing and deploying IT-based responses. This paper takes a practitioner perspective. The authors have a combined experience of over 35 years in the semiconductor industry

Agility and Information Technology Diffusion in the Semiconductor Industry

New product development in the semiconductor industry is characterized by products with a high level of intellectual property content, and ever-decreasing product development cycles, designed by very scarce engineering talent. The foundation of the success of many semiconductor companies is their ability to respond quickly to turbulent market conditions. This ability is contingent on intra-organizational and interorganizational factors, which will be described in this paper. Firms are attempting to overcome these agility-related challenges by developing and deploying IT-based responses. This paper takes a practitioner perspective. The authors have a combined experience of over 35 years in the semiconductor industry

National innovation systems, developing countries, and the role of intermediaries: a critical review of the literature

Developed over the past three decades, the national innovation system concept (NIS) has been widely used by both scholars and policy makers to explain how interactions between a set of distinct, nationally bounded institutions supports and facilitates technological change and the emergence and diffusion of new innovations. This concept provides a framework by which developing countries can adopt for purposes of catching up. Initially conceived on structures and interactions identified in economically advanced countries, the application of the NIS concept to developing countries has been gradual and has coincided – in the NIS literature – with a move away from overly macro-interpretations to an emphasis on micro-level interactions and processes, with much of this work questioning the nation state as the most appropriate level of analysis, as well as the emergence of certain intermediary actors thought to facilitate knowledge exchange between actors and institutions. This paper reviews the NIS literature chronologically, showing how this shift in emphasis has diminished somewhat the importance of both institutions, particularly governments, and the process of institutional capacity building. In doing so, the paper suggests that more recent literature on intermediaries such as industry associations may offer valuable insights to how institutional capacity building occurs and how it might be directed, particularly in the context of developing countries where governance capacities are often lacking, contributing to less effective innovation systems, stagnant economies, and unequal development

Why Should Emerging Economies Give up National Currencies: A Case for 'Institutions Substitution'

Financial contagion and Sudden Stops of capital inflows experienced in emerging-markets crises may originate in an explosive mix of lack of policy credibility and world capital market imperfections that afflict emerging economies with national currencies. Hence, this paper argues that abandoning national currencies to adopt a hard currency can significantly reduce the emerging countries' vulnerability to these crises. The credibility of their financial policies would be greatly enhanced by the implicit subordination to the policy-making institutions of the hard currency issuer. Their access to international capital markets would improve as the same expertise and information that global investors gather already to evaluate the monetary policy of the hard currency issuer would apply to emerging economies. Yet, adopting a hard currency does not eliminate business cycles, rule out all forms of financial crises, or solve severe fiscal problems that plague emerging economies, and it entails giving up seigniorage and potential benefits of conducting independent monetary policy. However, these disadvantages seem dwarfed by the urgent need to enable emerging countries to access global capital markets without exposing them to the risk of recurrent Sudden Stops.

How to manage people who think. A structural approach.

This is a paper about creativity, diversity and other often used buzzwords. It is also a paper about how to manage people who think. Today we live in a world in which computers and mobile phones have become the key artifacts. Nokia´s slogan ”connecting people” expresses in a brilliant way what it is all about. When we connect people information is transfered and new knowledge hopefully created. And innovations, ideas and individuals are central for everything that takes place. We are all supposed to be flexible, exercising our knowledge in a setting characterized by diversity. This setting is also characterized by paradoxes that I will write more about further down. But transformations such as the globalization and implementing of new information technology race crucial questions about how to deal with a changing economic landscape and new mindsets and changing attitudes. The pages that follow is based on extensive reading of the literature and participating in many conferences and work-shops. In addition to this I have interviewed managers and employees at Electrolux, Ericsson, TeliaSonera and The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise. I have asked people in the above mentioned organizations how they react to concepts such as the knowledge society and the practice of managing knowledge, creativity, diversity and flexibility. This paper is written with a Scandinavian perspective. It is also written with a social constructionist perspective. The theoretical framework includes theories about knowledge management, structuration theory and cognitive theories. The findings are based on interpretative research and I have systematically reflected over the material I have collected. I direct myself towards people in business who think and worry about the future. The purpose is to inspire to further discussions about these very important matters.Knowledge management; structuration theory; knowledge society; globalization; creativity; diversity; flexibility.

Monetary economics from econophysics perspective

This is an invited article for the Discussion and Debate special issue of The European Physical Journal Special Topics on the subject "Can Economics Be a Physical Science?" The first part of the paper traces the personal path of the author from theoretical physics to economics. It briefly summarizes applications of statistical physics to monetary transactions in an ensemble of economic agents. It shows how a highly unequal probability distribution of money emerges due to irreversible increase of entropy in the system. The second part examines deep conceptual and controversial issues and fallacies in monetary economics from econophysics perspective. These issues include the nature of money, conservation (or not) of money, distinctions between money vs. wealth and money vs. debt, creation of money by the state and debt by the banks, the origins of monetary crises and capitalist profit. Presentation uses plain language understandable to laypeople and may be of interest to both specialists and general public.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figur

Towards digital globalization and the covid-19 challenge

Digital globalization is a new form of globalization. It brings about relevant changes regarding how business is conducted across borders, the flow of economic benefits, and broadening participation. The growth of data and information related to digital globalization determines that global economic, financial, and social connections increase through digital platforms. Covid-19 is causing a shock to the global economy that is proving to be both faster and more severe than the 2008 global financial crisis. If the current crisis is pushing towards deglobalization, at the same time, Covid-19 represents a challenge for digital globalization and the digital transformation of economies. This research contribution examines the process towards digital globalization that is characterizing the world economy, its impact on businesses, consumers, and governments. It also discusses the challenge that the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic is posing to the globalization and digital transformation of economies

Debt dynamics in Europe: a network general equilibrium GVAR approach

In this work, we investigate the dynamic interdependencies among the EU12 economies using a competitive general equilibrium network system representation. Additionally, using Bayesian techniques, we estimate the autoregressive scheme that characterizes the equilibrium price system of the network, while characterizing each economy/node in the universe of our network in terms of its degree of pervasiveness. In this context, we unveil the dominant(s) unit(s) in our model and estimate the dynamic linkages between the economies/nodes. Lastly, in terms of robustness analysis, we compare the findings of the degree pervasiveness of each economy against other popular quantitative methods in the literature. According to our findings, the economy of Germany acts as weakly dominant entity in the EU12 economy. Meanwhile, all shocks die out in the short run, without any long lasting effect