Platform Economy: Innovation, Governance and Prosperity
Aug 03-2022
A new book on the platform economy by a NSD research team came onto bookshelf recently and became the focal point of the 4th edition of Chengze Forum on July 31st.
Platform Economy: Innovation, Governance and Prosperity, is a collection of the latest research findings by the team of 20 scholars assembled in June 2021. Prof. Yao Yang, Dean of the NSD, commended the book as another cutting-edge research project of the NSD after two previous breakthroughs – ‘China 2049’ and ‘Digital Economy’. He believed that the in-depth and reasoning-based research results will offer constructive reference for decision makers, practitioners and researchers.
Prof. Huang Yiping, Associate Dean of the NSD and Director of PKU Institute of Digital Finance, boiled the main contents of the book into five points. Firstly, put in a global perspective, China’s platform economy has been developing fairly well, but certain behavior therein isn’t sustainable, thereby calling for the need to strengthen regulatory oversight. Another aspect of the platform economy is its substantially positive role in changing the current economic system for the better and its critical part in driving the sustainable growth of the economy over the long term, as it is capable of facilitating the expansion of scale, improving efficiency, enhancing user experience, lowering costs, and controlling risks. However, the platform economy is confronted with a number of challenges, ranging from monopolistic competition and lack of proper employment safeguards to algorithmic discriminations; as such, supervision and regulation are equally indispensable for its long-term development. Fourthly, the research team advised that relevant authorities routinize supervision, enhance policy coordination, and reduce movement-styled oversight and regulatory competition. Lastly, Prof. Huang pointed out that more puzzles on the topic are yet to be cracked, including the evaluation criteria for monopolistic platforms and the trading and pricing of digital factors.
The one-day event consisted of four seminars with researchers in such spheres as economics, law and management making presentations that shed light on the development trends and governance measures of the platform economy.