Restrictive rules holding back innovation in the financial sector should be updated to bolster Canada’s productivity. The authors examine the contribution of the financial services sector to Canada’s productivity growth and find it has been underwhelming, considering its potential. The financial services sector employs relatively more Canadians with postsecondary and postgraduate education than do other sectors, and promotes growth and productivity within the other complementary sectors that serve it. As a result, any increase of productivity in the financial sector has an outsized effect on Canada’s productivity at large. The report lays out how regulatory changes could improve the contribution of the financial sector to productivity by increasing competition through the development of fintechs (financial technology), and by bolstering lending to small and medium sized businesses (SMEs), through measures including a switch from a focus on mortgage lending to business lending.
Innovation Policy
The advent of the digital age has radically changed the way Canadians create and consume cultural content. However, despite the radical changes in economic and technological forces, Canada’s broadcasting and cultural policy frameworks remain stuck in the 1960s. Because of this outdated, domestic-facing policy framework, the paper makes the case that Canadian creators and producers are falling behind in the new, dynamic global marketplace. Rather than promoting Canadian content, the current model effectively serves to limit high-quality Canadian-created or produced movies, shows, and other products. Thus, Golick and Speer argue that policy-makers ought to act ambitiously when it comes to updating the cultural policy framework for the digital age. This would require leveraging the new and evolving digital revolution to cultivate a dynamic and ultimately self-sufficient cultural industry.
Despite concern over climate change, global carbon emissions continue to rise. Reversing the trend requires clean energy innovation. It is time for Mission Innovation member nations to make good on their commitment to double clean energy RD&D.
The training participation of the low-skilled has increased significantly in recent decades.In order to further strengthen the continuing education participation of semi-skilled and unskilled workers, all stakeholders are in demand: Companies should increasingly offer jobs on which workplace-oriented learning is possible and competences can be acquired. Even learning guides who ensure that certain skills are learned as part of the daily work process are important for the low-skilled.
The Greens, Intelligent and Creative Cities (VIC) are living organisms that grow, develop and evolve to the extent that its residents make them. They must be understood as complex social, economic and political ecosystems , highly dynamic and subject to the accelerated transformations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) has released its annual report for 2018 detailing its accomplishments in research, policy recommendation, and collaboration in the following fields: Agriculture, natural resources, and environmental management; human development, labor markets, and poverty; institutions, law, and economics; macroeconomics, finance, and growth; public economics and governance; regional, urban, and rural development; science, technology, and innovation; and trade and industry and international economy.
The entry of the internet, personal computer, and the mobile phone into everyday life has already changed how people live and work, and how companies do their business. Indeed, the availability of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) is also changing how governments serve their people. Undeniably, governments around the world recognize the importance of “e-government”.
Argentina's growth and outcome fluctuations point to a clear failure in the current, stagnant welfare system. In order to breathe life into the economy Argentina's policy makers must refute the myth of zero-sum economics and instead focus on opportunities for growth.
The increasing use and dependence of technology by organizations, the cloud, the Internet of Things, Big Data, high connectivity, Artificial Intelligence and the premise that "it is not a matter of whether events will happen, but when" , demand from organizations the permanent need for preparation, learning and reinvention, where being resilient and innovating, is the true hallmark that must be developed in order to survive.
The digital revolution is only getting started. Digital disruption, which thus far has transformed a few sectors, is working its way into every sector of the economy. New technologies and exponential growth in the volume of data being produced by people and machines lend themselves to new business models and new kinds of products, while making everything from schools to hospitals more effective. Used correctly, this data explosion promises to make us healthier, richer, sometimes even more compassionate, and to solve intractable societal challenges like climate change.