WUEconomics podcast

For several years now, Western companies invest in China and earn good money with that. On the one side the margins of production had been high and on the other side China offered a huge market potential. Therefore, firms went east. 

Once being in China, where the system and regulations are different, they realized that not everything is easy. In this talk you will learn about current challenges for western firms in China – besides the ownership share restriction for OEMs and fierce competition in China, data-security turns out to be one of the biggest issues. 

Thanks to @Prof. Doris Fischer, Professor for China Business and Economics at the Julius-Maximilians University of Wuerzburg, for sharing amazing insights.

In the second part (2/5) of the interview with Prof. Doris Fischer, we focused on the transmission of China and the changing growth-model. The Chinese government has realized that the growth-models of the past are not sustainable because they came along with lots of negative side-effects like a demographic issue, enormous population flows into rural areas and dependencies on external factors. The focus was set on green-technology and the key word is innovation.

Alongside the new growth-model and the access of China to the WTO, Chinese companies started to invest abroad, which was hardly possible and not really wanted before. The Western world and especially Germany became confused. “What is the deal behind buying our companies? How dare they?” People in Germany were afraid, that this process was strategically controlled by the Chinese government to buy German knowhow. Looking at the process more into detail, one will see that this is only one part of the story. 

Check out #15 Episode of the “WUEconomics – outside the box – Podcast” for more details and insights.

Link: http://www.sinologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/team/lehrstuhlinhaberinnen/prof-dr-doris-fischer

Prof. Doris Fischer discovered her passion for China business and economics in the 1980s, a time where this combination in an academic context was not established yet. It used to be a combination of two separate major courses of study but times have changed and today it is an accepted interdisciplinary research field . Although research on the topic has been established, there are still not many interdisciplinary courses of study like the one in Würzburg. In order to understand the economic development, the transmission and growth of the Chinese economy, one has to understand economic concepts on the one hand and cultural, systematical aspects – the rules of the game – on the other hand. The country once known as the workbench of the world is transforming and challenging the Western world in all sectors. There are lots of economic puzzles that come with the fast development and the size of the country, which affords creating multiple layers of understanding. This is what makes it so challenging and interesting. China and its economy is changing at an extremely high pace  and the textbooks – which have been written from scratch – have to be updated at least every two years.

In the second part of this Episode we talk about the Master program for China business and economics, that is offered by Prof. Fischer at the University of Wuerzburg. To summarize, the interdisciplinary program is a combination of economics, language, culture, applied research, and projects. It prepares students to either work for Western or Chinese companies in China and also for firms in Germany that transact with Chinese companies. Even if the students do not end up in one of the two named fields, they are equipped with a profound knowledge and understanding of China business and economics. Obviously, the graduate students have a lot of opportunities to start a promising career.

Talk with Prof. Doris Fischer, Professor for China Business and Economics at the University of Wuerzburg. She is member of the board of the German Association for Asian Studies and Member of the Editors for the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (1/5).

Check out #14 Episode of the “WUEconomics – outside the box – Podcast” for more details and insights. 

#china #economics #education #academia #business #university #wuerzburg #future #wueconomics #podcast #digital #wueconomicspodcast

Impact of digital transformation on the labor market:

Why is digitization,Information of Technologies (IoT), Industrial Revolution 4 or however we call it so special? In the last 25 years, we witnessed rapid technological progress and digitalization –  looking at the labor market, we have more employed people in Germany than at any other given moment. How does that fit? Therefore, the question is whether the simple story of digitization destroying jobs is not the whole story. The economic system is quite flexible and able to deal with many kinds of shocks. Looking into the future, of course it depends and what kind of fundamental new technologies emerge. What we will see is an increase in productivity. One might even see a scenario where people might have the opportunity to reduce their working time. That's one way on how so far our societies have dealt with strong productivity increases of industrial revolutions in the past. Why can`t we have a situation where we only work 30 hours per week in 20 years and let the machines do the rest? Why don`t we think about a sabbatical every four years for all employees, so that we have time to learn new things and create a new framework for the concept of lifelong learning?

Bitcoin, blockchain, distributed ledger technology

Cryptocurrency is picking up the principles of the model of currency competition developed by Hayek many decades ago - the interesting fact is that people are willing to give real money in exchange for private money which is in general nothing but an IOU. Distributed Ledger technology (DLT) has the advantage that the person having created the system is no longer seen - this is an important initial psychological factor. As soon as people trust in the system, they are willing to pay money and so it is a kind of transformation of something completely worthless into something people have trust in. We will further discuss the future of cryptocurrencies. As governments have the opportunity to intervene within the system, it is questionable if the cryptocurrencies that we see today will be the currencies of the future. But for sure, digitalization will change the financial system and in this context peer to peer lending could be a form of money exchange that might challenge the traditional role of banks. Think about digital platforms collecting money from people who want to save money on one side and distributing it to people who need money to buy a house for instance on the other side and the process of monitoring the borrowers and diversifying the funds. Consequently, you might no longer need to have your deposit with a traditional bank as it might be possible to open short-term deposits at the central banks for everyone. This trend could fundamentally challenge the role of banks as lenders and therefore is a hot research topic at the chair of Prof. Dr. Peter Bofinger.

Check out #13 Episode of the “WUEconomics – outside the box – Podcast” for more details and insights. 

In public debate and among economists, there has been an emotional debate whether Germany has profited by the Euro(zone) or not. Prof. Bofinger is an advocate of the European idea and he calls the Eurozone – including all weaknesses –  a story of success. He emphasizes that Germany also profited significantly by the creation of the Eurozone. The unemployment rate in Germany is at a record low. After years of crises, the Eurozone is growing again. And the Euro as a common currency prevents economies from exchange rate shocks. Despite of the benefits of the Eurozone, we still have an unfinished building. On the one hand the Eurozone follows a common monetary policy driven by the European Central Bank and on the other hand we have 19 independent fiscal policies. Therefore, the system is always prone to shocks. The main problem is that the member states are not willing to give up the national scope on their fiscal policy.

Concerning the Brexit, Prof. Bofinger draws parallels to the amputation of a healthy leg, by believing that with the proteases one can walk better. Now a lot of people realize that this might be really painful. At the end, it might be an opportunity for the countries that committed themselves to Europe, to enforce future cooperation in order to stay competitive in the global power triangle.

Part 3: Talk with Prof. Dr. Peter Bofinger, Head of Chair for Monetary Policy and International Economics at University Würzburg, Member of the Council of German Economic Experts, called for the Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET) and one of the most popular economists in the German-speaking area as well as in an international context.

In this Episode of the Podcast we talk about the newly founded Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET) – the Commission has been set up by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and is led by the Nobel Prize laureates in economics Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence. In the talk Prof. Bofinger gives more insights and tell us about his personal role in the commission.

Moreover, we focus on Germany’s economic strengths and the rapid transformation from Europeans sick man to the European power house.

Finally, we discuss the fact, that the German economy marks year number 9 of economic up-rise and boom. In contrast to that we see massive deficits in European countries, persistent structural problems, radical political shifts, global protectionist tendencies and a moderate economic development in China. The main question is: When does The Party end?

We talk about the general tasks of economists, the education program and why the expertise of economists is important for institutions, companies and political decision-makers. One could compare the work of and economist with that of a medical doctor. Whereas the medical doctor examines the health of human beings, economists examine the health of an economic system. Economist give expertise on how to handle shocks (e.g. technological shocks like digital transformation or crisis like the financial crisis, euro-crisis). Moreover, economists understand what the drivers of economic cycles are, evaluate economic constellations and developments.

Moreover, Prof. Bofinger gives insights into his work for the Council of German Economic Experts and his function in the commission. The council is nominated by the government but it is functioning politically independent – which is different from other councils, for instance the council of economic advisers in the United States. Independency means that the council is able to criticize the government and government here has no way to interfere with the content of advice and the annual report.

At the moment there are huge economic challenges and it's really important for Germany to stay on top of technology to keep first class status. In our talk, Prof. Bofinger claims that here, government should do more to support the efforts of a lot of companies to create new technologies and to stay world market leaders.

Guest: Prof. Dr. Rainer Thome, Professor for Intelligent Business Synergy at University of Würzburg and business man, expert and visionary in the field of digital transformation and progress.

Digital transformation and progress will change the way we work and learn in the future. While the speed of economic development increases and cycles get shorter, companies have to make sure that their employees do not lose contact. Learning-cycles  getting shorter. Moreover, people will have to bring - additionally to their working-space-specific knowledge - interdisciplinary competences. On the one hand we will need people who understand markets and processes, who understand computer science and technology. On the other hand, we need teachers and instructors who are up-to-date  and are able to lighten up the fire in people, promote curiosity and the understanding for each-other.

We talk about new forms of education - where content and information are available whenever people need it. Modern technology and voice control are opening up new opportunities. But still, one of the biggest challenge is to make people willing to use it – therefore it is essential to create a wonderful UX and eliminate friction.

Curious?

Check out #9 Episode of the “WUEconomics – outside the box – Podcast” for more details and insights. 

https://www.wiwi.uni-wuerzburg.de/lehrstuhl/wiinf/mitarbeiter/prof-dr-rainer-thome/

http://www.prof-thome-gruppe.de/

In part 1 of the talk with Professor Thome we will take you to a fascinating journey containing over half a decade of projects on computer, software and services. Professor Thome experienced the entire journey, starting with a huge IBM machine in 1966, implementing one of the first standard software solutions to a medium-sized company in 1979, and now working on intelligent, interactive systems, cloud services and more. Professor Thome predicted a lot of developments and trends very early. In the early 2000s he predicted his students cashless-stores that Amazon opened in 2018. He also mentioned the opportunities of Cyber Physical Systems.

The big question now: What`s next? Therefore, we talked about topics that might characterize our current future. Two very hot topics are flexible and intelligent robots and intelligent information systems. Information systems that are connected with sensors giving the opportunity to know about everything that is happening around us. For companies this opens up huge opportunities, for instance, if you think about logistics and material flow. A company will know exactly where the material is and how fast the flow is of a customer-ordered item on the work-bench. If you have precise real-time information about that, this will give absolutely new possibilities of producing in the right time, in the right form, and serving the needs of customers.

Digital transformation is a (fast) ongoing process. And we have to be aware that everything is going to change continuously again and again and again. If companies do not understand that and don't have the mindset for this change, they are really in trouble – Kodak!

https://www.wiwi.uni-wuerzburg.de/lehrstuhl/wiinf/mitarbeiter/prof-dr-rainer-thome/

http://www.prof-thome-gruppe.de/

Getting along with the satellite research we witness a paradigm shift especially in the context of global telecommunication channels. Traditional big multifunctional satellites will become complemented by distributed networked small satellites which have capabilities to self-organize. These small satellites can thus cover a much larger area which leads to a better temporal and spatial resolution by a team of distributed satellites. Networks of satellites can provide communication everywhere. Small satellite will be appropriate in the context of telemedicine, Industry 4.0 or the monitoring of pollution. The technology is highly interesting for places that are not connected to classical communication connections like desserts, mountains, on the see (oil platforms, offshore wind parks) or smaller villages in poor countries. These Satellite systems have potential to increase efficiency and reduce production costs. The terms of use are broad – from industrial plants to  medicine.