Economic dimensions of prospective technological studies at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission

Abstract

The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) as part of the European Union (EU) Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) provides technoeconomic analysis support to European decision-makers, by monitoring and analysing science and technology (S/T)-related developments, their cross-sectoral impact, their interrelationship with the socioeconomic context, and their potential future policy implications. The effects of S/T on the economic context are multiple, including the opening up of new markets, the increase or decrease of competition in an industry, the location of production of goods/services, the demand for factors of production such as labour and capital, the implications for skills demand, the consequences for wages and employment, the environmental impact, etc. Given informational asymmetries, policy-makers need ways to extract useful information regarding S/T developments and their potential economic implications, and can benefit from policy-sensitive analysis from knowledgeable impartial sources of information. Since S/T innovations have important economic implications (and are themselves influenced by economic incentives), the better one can anticipate them, the more successfully one can adapt. What is crucial here is the capacity to think through the prospective implications of S/T developments, and foster the kinds of institutions and incentives that will make successful adaptation part of the normal working of the economy, rather than the results of ad hoc re-active policies.