HOI WAI JACKIE CHENG
Development economist at the UN, core team member of UN flagship reports, currently based in New York, and previously based in Beijing, Oxford and Hong Kong.
cheng3[at]un[dot]org
TECHNOLOGY
Topics:
​
-
Data economy
-
Competition policy
-
Intellectual property rights
-
National innovation system and technology diffusion
-
Development impact of technologies
July, 2023
​
Harnessing the economic dividends from demographic transition​
​
(Contributing member of the writing team)
​
UN DESA Frontier Technology Issues series
​
This Frontier Technology Issues look at how countries can use technologies to realize growth potential resulting from favorable shift in population structure, i.e., the so-called demographic dividend.
​
The policy brief identified country examples (Egypt, India, Myanmar, South Africa, and others) where technologies are used to support employment of the younger workers through (1) identifying the skills needed for high productivity jobs; (2) building the infrastructure needed to support human capital; and (3) improving education and the human capital of the future.
​
May, 2023
​
Attention Economy
​
(Coauthored with Chantal Line Carpentier, Arun Jacob, Richard Roehrl, Patricia Klauer, and Kristofer Doerfler)
​
UN Economist Network New Economics for Sustainable Development brief series
​
The concept of attention economy was first coined in the late 1960s by Herbert A. Simon, characterizing the problem of information overload as an economic one. The concept has become increasingly popular with the rise of the internet making content (supply) increasingly abundant and immediately available, and attention becoming the limiting factor in the consumption of information. While the supply of accessible information has continued to grow rapidly - digital data roughly doubles every two years - the demand for information is limited by the scarce attention we can give to it. Indeed, the total available attention is limited by the number of people with access to information and the fixed number of hours in a day and conflicting demands on our time and attention. Davenport and Beck (2001) first define the "economics of attention" as an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems. We are increasingly living in an “attention economy” rather than an “information economy”.
This brief aims to address the risks posed by the extraction and monetization of attention through a shift of the current exploitative attention economy to one that is regenerative and benefits all stakeholders.
​
August, 2022
​
Factors Affecting Technological Diffusion Through Social Networks: A Review of the Empirical Evidence
​
The World Bank Research Observer, published by Oxford University Press
​
Network theory-based interventions could be particularly effective for promoting technology adoption when information friction serves as the major obstacle to technology diffusion. To inform policy makers interested in such interventions, this paper systematically reviews empirical evidence on determinants of how social networks shape technology diffusion. It identifies three sets of factors that individually and jointly affect technological diffusion on social networks: Population characteristics, including those describe overall network structures and key economic agents’ network positions and technology sophistication; technology parameters; and information propagation mechanisms. Accurate social network assessment—crucial for the formulation of network interventions—relies on making careful selection out of the many measures of network characteristics and layers of socioeconomic interactions to examine, and on accurately defining the scope and size of network data to collect. Evidence indicates effective network interventions should aim to introduce new technologies first to economic agents with high centrality or clustering, sufficient resemblance to average population, and whom are incentivized to communicate with others.
​
[Article link] [LSE Department of International Development Blog piece]
November 18, 2021
​
Frontier technologies for smallholder farmers: addressing information asymmetries and deficiencies
​
(Coauthored with Kenneth Iversen, Kristinn Sv. Helgason and Marcelo LaFleur)
​
UN DESA Frontier Technology Issues series
​
This Frontier Technology Issue focuses on a select set of technologies that address informational challenges that farmers face and that have the potential to create high economic value for smallholder farms in developing countries. The FTI highlights the benefits of these technologies, the barriers to their adoption, as well as the factors that may enable their implementation.
​
[PDF] [UN DESA News]
July 8, 2021
​
Lithium-ion batteries: a pillar for a fossil fuel-free economy?
​
(Coauthored with Hiroshi Kawamura, Marcelo LaFleur, and Kenneth Iversen)
​
UN DESA Frontier Technology Issues series
​
This Frontier Technology Issues examines the recent trends in production and use of Li-ion batteries, in which the two major emitters, utility and transport sectors, have been the two largest users of Li-ion batteries. It considers how the applications of the batteries in the two sectors are expected to reduce GHG emissions. The last section examines the role of governments in removing technological and economic obstacles and encouraging the wider application of Li-ion batteries.
​
[PDF] [UN DESA News]
​
November 5, 2020
​
Can digital technologies put us back on the path to achieve the SDGs?
​
(Coauthored with Marcelo LaFleur, Kenneth Iversen, Hiroshi Kawamura and Nicole Hunt)
​
UN DESA Frontier Technology Issues series
​
Abstract: As countries respond to the COVID-19 crisis, frontier digital technologies are unlocking new possibilities to build back better and to put countries back on the path to achieve the SDGs. This Frontier Technology Issue shows how many countries are using technologies in response to the pandemic, to create decent work (SDG 8), improve health services and outcomes (SDG 3), and promote education and learning (SDG 4). It also warns that technology is widening disparities if unchecked, and those on the wrong side of the digital divide risk being left further behind.
Policies must promote job-generating technologies and maximizing their employment effects. Governments can deploy technology to enable new models of health delivery but with a focus on health outcomes. Governments can further work to integrate remote education using appropriate technologies into existing education systems with an eye to the future. National and global partners must work to narrow the digital divide.
​
September 17, 2020
​
Emerging and frontier technologies
​
(Chapter co-lead with Marcelo LaFleur)
​
in Report of UN Economist Network for the UN 75th Anniversary: Shaping the Trends of Our Time
​
Excerpt: Digital dividends coexist with digital divides. It is important, therefore, to establish policies to lay the foundations of an inclusive digital economy and society. Harnessing digital dividends will require up-to-date policies and regulatory frameworks in many areas, including innovation, financing, connectivity, labour markets, competition, and governance of the development and use of technologies. This calls for immediate action not only from countries themselves but also from the international community to support developing countries, especially the least developed countries, in adopting frontier technological breakthroughs.
[Full report] [Executive summary] [UN DESA news] [IISD news]
June 6, 2020
​
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Development and Intellectual Property: The World Economic and Social Survey 2018 and Beyond
(Coauthored with Mariangela Parra-Lancourt)
​
in Intellectual Property Law and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Edited by Christopher Heath, Anselm Kamperman Sanders and Anke Moerland), published by Kluwer Law International B.V.
​
The chapter calls for a rethinking of the trade-off between innovation and diffusion, with the focus on revisiting the current intellectual property (IP) institutions against the backdrop of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and sustainable development.
The contention is underpinned by two observations. First, a review of empirical evidence has generally failed to find much effect of IP institutions, notably patents, on innovation – the raison d’eÌ‚tre of IP. While the incentivizing effect of IP on any given innovator’s R&D activities is indisputable, its effect on system-wide innovation could be counteracted by several factors. These include the adverse effects of IP institutions on innovation diffusion, follow-up innovations and competition, which could be partly attributed to the lack of clear boundaries of IP and the absence of efficient and liquid IP markets. As will be discussed in this chapter, these effects will likely become more salient in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Secondly, the increasingly restrictive global intellectual property rights (IPR) regime poses significant challenges to countries, especially developing ones, in accessing frontier technologies and fully participating in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which would in all likelihood lead to greater technology and development gaps. It may also lead to failures in addressing global problems such as climate change due to the underutilization of technologies that could provide effective solutions if appropriately diffused.
This chapter concludes with a discussion on some of the options to revamp the market-based IP institutions that are directed at exclusivity and ownership, as well as alternative incentive mechanisms that seek to enable a wider diffusion of technologies without hampering innovation efforts.
May 17, 2020
​
Economic properties of data and the monopolistic tendencies of data economy:
policies to limit an Orwellian possibility
​
UN DESA working paper
​
The potential of data for supporting development is bounded only by the amount and variety of data that can be collected and analyzed, which is to say it is almost infinite. However, if data’s vast benefits are disproportionately captured by few in the society, leaving no one behind – an overarching principle of the Sustainable Development Goals – would be difficult to attain, even when everyone benefits from the use of data. This paper discusses key data properties and dynamics in data economy that create the tendencies for monopolies to emerge, reinforcing unbalanced power between corporates and other actors and generating negative distributional implications. If mismanaged, transformation toward the data economy could end up being an unequalizing force in an already highly-unequal world.
​
In the context of data economy, this paper presents critiques of the common approaches to deal with monopolies. Self-correction in market is unlikely to happen fast enough but breaking up or nationalizing data monopolies are undesirable from effectiveness and innovation perspectives. Strengthening data ownership is key to rebalancing the power asymmetry between corporates and digital subjects, but difficulty of data valuation needs to be overcome. Analyses in this paper support further exploring the idea of setting up an independent, accountable and forward-looking Digital Authority that has both competition and noncompetition goals.
​
February 18, 2020
​
Does the sharing economy share or concentrate?
​
(Coauthored with Kathy Heejung Jung, Mariangela Parra-Lancourt, and Ana Rachael Powell)
​
UN DESA Frontier Technology Quarterly series
​
Head-spinning expansion of the sharing economy has given rise to both hope and anxiety. On one hand, the sharing economy offers solutions to large-scale coordination problems. At the same time, there are increasing concerns that this new phenomenon will not live up to its “sharing” name and that the welfare gains it produces will not be distributed fairly. Several forces are at play in the sharing economy that – if left unchecked – could further worsen inequality in an already highly unequal world.
​
The net impact of the sharing economy will depend on each country’s development conditions and policies. The effect on developing countries could very well be different from that in developed countries.
The sharing economy could be a force for good and for improving equality in developing countries. But its ultimate impact on equality will depend on regulations that enhance market competition, access to data, pricing and algorithm transparency, and tax cooperation, among others.
January 31, 2019
​
Data Economy: Radical transformation or dystopia?
(Coauthored with Marcelo LaFleur and Hamid Rashid)
UN DESA Frontier Technology Quarterly series
​
The data economy has given rise to the world’s most powerful corporations. Can better data protection and privacy standards deliver more fair and equitable outcomes?
October 8, 2018
​
Fostering innovation, diffusion and adoption
​
(Chapter lead; coauthored with Marcelo LaFleur)
​
In UN World Economic and Social Survey 2018: Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development
​
In discussing the links between development gaps and technological divides, this chapter first explains the connection between innovation and economic growth, and the importance of each for sustainable development. Unfortunately, while relatively large developing countries have been able to innovate and achieve high rates of growth—often adopting and using technologies developed in other countries — this is not the case for many others.The chapter discusses key elements of the innovation and diffusion processes, which have implications for the technological divide between developed and developing countries and within those countries. It highlights four factors that could lead to an even wider divide: (a) continued divergence in the ability of firms and countries to innovate and adopt existing technologies; (b) growing market power concentration; (c) increasingly more stringent and restrictive intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes; and (d) possible confinement of technology diffusion to firms of similar technological capacities.The chapter discusses the role of Governments in closing the technological divide. For countries and firms, keeping up with and catching up to the technological frontier will depend on how well they can develop and manage their national innovation system (NIS)—a system of interconnected institutions whose aim is to create, store and transfer new technologies.
[Chapter] [Full report] [My interview with UN News (Chinese)]
October 8, 2018
​
International cooperation for managing frontier technologies
(Coauthored with Mariangela Parra-Lancourt and Sergio Vieira)
In UN World Economic and Social Survey 2018: Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development
​
The chapter addresses the issue of market-power concentration while underscoring that bridging the technology divide makes international cooperation imperative. The “winner-take-most” phenomenon has allowed a small number of technology firms to dominate their respective industries at the global level, challenging traditional checks and balances at the national level. International cooperation must therefore address excessive market power in the frontier technology sectors.
This chapter also identifies the challenges faced by international taxation in the context of the digital economy and digitalization. Those operating within the current tax framework, designed with the traditional brick-and-mortar economy in mind, find themselves in uncharted territory when attempting to tax income associated with intangible activities and transactions enabled by the Internet and frontier technologies.
The chapter also explores broader ethical questions. It highlights a range of initiatives that are being undertaken by nations and jurisdictions worldwide with the aim of creating or updating relevant laws and regulations so as to ensure that they reflect the evolving challenges associated with emerging technologies. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the wider role that is being played by the United Nations through support to Member States as they strive to shape new technologies in ways that promote the common good, human dignity and prosperity and protect the environment.
November, 2014
​
Big Data for Development in China
​
UNDP China working paper
​
The purpose of this paper is to draw the attention of development practitioners to the potential of Big Data for Development, i.e. identification of sources of Big Data relevant to policy and planning of development programmes, in China.
The paper argues that there is a case for development practitioners to explore the potential of Big Data for Development in China. It recommends two levels of Big Data for Development work for development practitioners to engage with in China. The first level of work is related to creating an enabling environment for Big Data for Development. The second level of work concerns tackling particular development challenges with the Big Data approach. As illustrative examples, the paper discusses how Big Data could be used to promote sustainable e-waste disposal practices, improve productivity of the public sector, understand socioeconomic trend, map poverty, improve urban transport planning, and identify pollution hot spots in cities.
​
The paper also discusses the challenges that China faces in Big Data for Development application on 3 fronts – data, analytical, and operational/systemic. In particular, the issue of data protection and privacy requires strong attention in order to protect the fundamental rights of the public.
The paper concludes by highlighting how Big Data could contribute to result-based management, the importance of development practitioners to understand its limitations, and its link to inclusive decision-making process.