Thematic Platform "Digital Transformation"

Large internal wage disparities between cities can be found worldwide. On the basis of data for Germany, the lecture identifies "assortative matching" of highly qualified employees and companies in large cities as a central driver of this development. A promising strategy to reduce spatial wage disparities is to improve matching in small cities.

Recent years have seen rapid developments in drone technology. Today, drones have the potential to become a reliable technology for civil, commercial and leisure use, presenting both opportunities and risks for societies. Although surveys have forecast likely public support for the use of drones, widespread introduction will need to be accompanied by regulation to address privacy, competition, sustainability, safety and security concerns and be benchmarked against existing transport options. Current government regulation of drones tends to be either too restrictive (hampering the development of new designs), or lagging behind (causing reluctance among potential end-users to adopt drone use). Governments must, therefore, be acquainted with developments taking place in the international context of the industry – particularly when considering transport sector use cases. In this talk we will explore the rapidly developing concept designs for drones and drone services, questions of acceptability of drone services, and their safe integration within the transport system as a whole. We will also consider the use of drones for different scales of payloads – both freight and passenger transport – as well as their potential as a support to other modes and aspects of transport, e.g., logistics, monitoring, maintenance and emergency services. The insights from the discussion will be taken into account in the ongoing OECD Working Group on "Drones – Acceptability and Integration with the Transport System".

In most industrialised countries, differences in economic outcomes between regions are just as pronounced as differences between countries. Since these disparities are linked to divergence in many other outcomes, from health and mortality to family formation and politics, it is important to understand the sources of these inequalities and possible ways how to reduce them. Increasing international trade volumes and technological progress are among the most important trends in the past decades, which have also contributed substantially to the manifestation of regional disparities. In this talk, I will discuss the evidence on the causal effects of increasing trade with China and Eastern Europe as well as the increasing use of industrial robots on (regional) inequality. These insights lead to conclusions on how policymakers could react to those trends.

The 11th international workshop in honour of Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and member of WIFO's International Board, focuses on topics around the urban-rural divide as well as winning and losing regions in times of increasingly digitalised economies and societies.

Digital platform firms led by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are changing social life, work, competition and, ultimately, value creation and capture. Today, the five US giants plus Alibaba and Tencent are the most valuable firms in the world. The increasing centrality of digital platforms for organising competition, work, and value creation is changing the balance of power between labour and employer and within a variety of supply chains. Not only do we have the salient cases of work contracting platforms such as Upwork and services platforms such as Uber and Lyft, but also there are new opportunities for generating income such as the Airbnb, app stores, YouTube, and beyond. Remarkably, even when workers are not displaced, platforms such as Yelp and TripAdvisor affect the work and management process. Digital platforms are also transforming the dynamics of competition in a wide variety of industries from services, logistics and finance through entertainment and music. I explore these dynamics and speculate how inter-firm competition might be impacted particularly as the platform giants become increasingly intertwined in all social and economic life and can leverage their existing power to enter yet other value-creation opportunities.

Von der zunehmenden Digitalisierung des Arbeitsmarktes sind wichtige Themen wie Wettbewerbsrecht, Arbeitnehmerrechte und die Finanzierung des Sozialstaates betroffen. In neuen virtuellen Produktionsräumen verschwimmen traditionelle Grenzen zwischen betrieblichem und externem Humankapital, zwischen abhängiger und selbständiger Beschäftigung, zwischen betrieblichem und individuellem Risiko. Die 11. Sozialstaatsenquete widmet sich dem Ausmaß und dem Umfang der neuen plattformbasierten Produktionsweisen in Europa und Österreich. Die betrieblichen Abläufe der durchlässigen Wertschöpfungsketten stehen ebenso im Mittelpunkt wie die Chancen und Risiken von plattformbasierter Leistungserbringung und die damit zusammenhängenden Arbeitsbeziehungen.

The Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) in cooperation with the Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), the German speaking section of the European Regional Science Association, are very pleased to announce their joint International Summer Conference in honor of Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and member of WIFO's Scientific Board. This year's workshop will focus on topics around digitalisation, settlement patterns and urbanisation. Additionally, empirical contributions falling in the broader range of regional economics are also welcome. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, questions related to: regional growth and cohesion – regional specialisation – regional location analyses, spatial location choice and location concepts – geographical impact of economic policy measures – regional labour markets – regional tourism – regional planning.

The conference in cooperation with the Main Association of Austrian Social Security Organisations highlights the relationship between new forms of work relations (cloud-work, crowdsourcing) and social security. There is an increasing gap between nationally regulated social security systems and transnationally acting enterprises and workers. These new developments as well as options for adaptions of the traditional social security system are going to be analysed during the conference.