The digital economy and its implications for labour. 1. The platform economy

TLDR

Digitalisation of the economy, driven by ICT, is reshaping production, labour exchange on platforms, prosumer roles, local micro‑production, asset sharing, robotics, monopolies, and Big Data, thereby affecting societal organization, taxation, labour regulation, welfare, and trade union responses. Transfer intends to publish two 2017 issues on “The digital economy and its implications for labour,” with the first addressing labour‑platform regulatory issues and the second exploring Keynesian consumption and Basic Income. The editorial plan involves a first issue concentrating on regulatory challenges of labour platforms, followed by a second issue tackling broader economic themes such as consumption dilemmas and Basic Income.

Abstract

The digitalisation of the economy refers to how ICT is transforming what goods and services we produce, how we produce them and where we produce them. This touches upon many aspects of society: how labour is being exchanged on digital platforms, how consumers are becoming producers (so-called prosumers), how mass production is being recalibrated to local micro-production, how underused asset capacity can be shared at close to zero marginal cost, how enterprises are revisiting their decisions on where to produce in view of the use of robots, how new monopolies are emerging and, last, but not least, the implications of Big Data for economic structures. All these issues have major implications for how we organise our societies, how we tax, how we regulate labour markets, how we organise our welfare states and, in particular, how trade union actions can address these new challenges. While the line of research on innovation cycles and transformation of markets is longstanding, social sciences today are trying to understand the wider implications of the digitalisation of the economy. The literature is fast growing, but it is still asking more questions than it is answering with regard to what we are observing. Transfer will in 2017 publish two issues on the theme of ‘The digital economy and its implications for labour’. This first issue will focus on the specific theme of labour platforms, addressing in particular regulatory issues, while the second issue will engage with broader themes such as the Keynesian consumption dilemma and Basic Income.