In the last few decades, digital technologies have created new businesses, services and modes of operation. For instance, technology companies called ‘platform’ companies are linking markets to buyers using the Internet, for everything from buying and selling, warehousing, and distribution to paying, travelling, communicating and learning. A handful of companies – the ‘Big Tech’ group – has created unprecedented technological advances within a few decades. The market has shifted so drastically that there is now a renewed interest in the validity of monopolistic markets and fair competition, exemplified by recent antitrust lawsuits in the U.S. The unchecked power of technology is leading to digital regulation in over 100 countries, including India. Debates are heated about the growing power of technology companies, and their influence on labour demand and wages. Questions are also being raised on the extent to which they safeguard customer trust, and whether they instead create monopolistic marketplaces that limit innovation.  

This, Kaushik Basu argues, is a fundamental shifting point, a set of ‘tremors’ indicating a change to come. Much as the Industrial Revolution was, at first, a change in how people earned and worked, where livelihood came from, and how the free market worked, this is a point that requires serious contemplation and regulation. Now, at a crucial juncture in this digital age, a new set of economic policies, interventions, and even theories is needed to address this fundamental shift that digital technologies are going to create, and are already creating. As legal scholar and antitrust and consumer law expert Lina Khan argues, “the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits... Under these conditions, predatory pricing becomes highly rational, even as existing doctrine treats it as irrational.” The recent spate of legal regulations accentuates growing concerns that we are not doing enough for this new global economy: so what more can we do? 
 
Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies, Cornell University, and Aditi Kothari Desai, vice-chairperson, DSP Asset Managers, will reflect on some of these issues, centrally: what are the new market rules given the proliferation and ubiquity of digital technologies? What are the global shifts in the economy that we are witnessing? And finally, what are some policy and regulatory changes that might respond best to this new change? 

SPEAKERS 

Kaushik Basu is an economist and policymaker. He is currently Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University; and N. R. Kamath Visiting Professor at IIT (Bombay). From 2009 to 2012, he was Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, and from 2012 to 2016, the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank. His books include ‘An Economist in the Real World’ (MIT Press); ‘The Republic of Beliefs’ (Princeton University Press); and ‘Policymaker’s Journal: From New Delhi to Washington D.C.’ (Simon & Schuster). His research interests span development economics, game theory, and industrial organization. As a policymaker, he was engaged in macro fiscal policymaking, multilateral policy coordination, and development policy work in several continents.  

Aditi Kothari Desai is the Vice Chairperson of DSP Asset Managers Pvt Ltd. (DSPAM). She also Heads Strategic Investments and serves as a member of the Executive Committee. She is Co-Founder & Director of compoundexpress. Aditi is passionate about the digitization of the financial sector and was instrumental in the launch of all DSP’s digital platforms including its investment platform, education platform, corporate platform and its distributor platform. She is very focused on the future of investment management and its distribution and is therefore very engaged in fintech for the wealth space. Aditi also leads financial wellness initiatives at DSPIM and was instrumental in launching Winvestor, a special initiative aimed at empowering women with confidence and financial knowledge to plan for their economic and long-term security. Aditi joined Merrill Lynch’s investment banking group in New York in 1998, primarily working on M&A activities in the Financial Institutions Group. Subsequently, she worked in DSP Merrill Lynch as part of the fixed income sales team and later joined DSP Merrill Lynch Fund Managers in 2002 (now DSP Asset Managers Pvt Ltd) where she worked on various projects, including establishing their offshore business. Aditi is a Trustee in the Hemendra Kothari Foundation as well as the Wildlife Conservation Trust. She is passionate about viewing and saving wildlife. Apart from being an Independent Director at Godrej Agrovet, she also serves on the Board of DASRA, a leading strategic philanthropy foundation in India. Aditi is also an Advisory Council Member with the British Asian Trust. Aditi serves on the Board of Harvard Business School - South Asia Advisory Board (SAAB). Aditi holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School.