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Shifting Paradigms

Growth, Finance, Jobs, and Inequality in the Digital Economy

Zia Qureshi, Cheonsik Woo
Release Date: January 11, 2022

Addressing the big questions about how technological change is transforming economies and societies

Rapid technological change—likely to accelerate as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic—is reshaping economies and how they grow. But change also causes disruption, creates winners and losers, and produces social stress. This book examines the challenges of digital transformation and suggests how creative policies can make it more productive and inclusive.

Shifting Paradigms is the second book on technological change produced by a joint research project of the Brookings Institution and the Korea Development Institute. Contributors are experts from the United States, Europe, and Korea. The first volume, Growth in a Time of Change, was published by Brookings in February 2020.

The book’s underlying thesis is that the future is arriving faster than expected. Long-accepted paradigms about economic growth are changing as digital technologies transform markets and nearly every aspect of business and work. Change will only intensify with advances in artificial intelligence and other innovations.

Investors, business leaders, workers, and public officials face many questions. Is rising market concentration inevitable with the new technologies or can their benefits be more widely shared? How can the promise of FinTech be captured while managing risks? Should workers fear the new automation? Are technology-driven shifts in business and work causing income inequality to rise? How should public policy respond?

Shifting Paradigms addresses these questions in an engaging manner for anyone interested in understanding how the economic and social agenda is being transformed by today’s winds of change.

Authors

Zia Qureshi is a Visiting Fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution and an economic consultant. His current research focuses on how technology is transforming economies. He previously worked at the World Bank and the IMF, including as Director in the World Bank’s Development Economics Department.

Cheonsik Woo is Director of the Office of Global Economy at the Korea Development Institute. He previously served as Senior Counselor to the Deputy Prime Minister at Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Economy and Senior Analyst at the OECD. His research interests include Korea’s development strategy, industrial competitiveness, and human resource development.