曾颂华：后疫情时代的技术变革力量——机遇和挑战

导读

新冠疫情加速技术变革，技术创新和应用在后疫情时代尤为重要。技术进步使消费者选择更加广泛，经济发展更具有包容性和效率性，带来更多的商业和就业机会，改善了公共服务和政府问责制。但与此同时，技术创新的颠覆性影响也给未来带来极大的不确定性和潜在风险。本文讨论三大风险领域以及应对措施：不平等加剧、监管框架、金融科技和金融稳定。

第一，技术创新对就业、收入和财富不平等的影响。许多国家不平等问题日益加剧，不平等成为全球政策议程中的首要问题。技术是导致收入不平等现象的主要原因，新冠疫情扩大国家内部和国家之间的不平等现象，加速数字化和自动化变革。应优先考虑以更包容的方式分享新技术带来的机遇，这需要政策来缓冲新技术对劳动力市场的影响，减少不平等现象。教育培训，包括终身长期学习和持续培训，应旨在提高劳动者在数字时代发展的能力。

第二，政策制定者需要确保监管框架满足数字时代的监管需求。1、竞争：技术部门刚出现时市场竞争激烈，随着技术部门扩大，“赢家通吃”现象更加普遍。技术时代需要革新竞争政策。创新不应该成为少数大公司的专利。监管政策需要聚焦于保护创新，保护小公司的进入和不被老牌公司所吞噬。2、数据隐私：疫情期间，数据是无价的，政府通过定位程序了解民众，决定是否需要封锁以控制病毒传播，数据收集和分析发挥了积极的社会作用。与此同时，一些滥用数据谋取私利的行为加剧了人们对如何保护数据隐私以及如何将收集的数据货币化的担忧。3、问责制：技术改变了人们获取信息的方式，甚至引发了关于什么是事实的问题。不实信息的有害影响已经在许多国家和地区得到证明。如何确保信息的问责制充满了艰难的选择。对此没有一刀切的解决方案。私营部门和国家各自的责任需要由社会自己定义，同时考虑到政治制度和社会偏好。政策的目标应该是允许信息自由流动，同时防止谣言和假新闻的传播，这说起来容易做起来难。4、网络安全：随着对技术的进一步依赖，网络威胁增加。威胁模式变得更加全球化，影响了更广泛的行业，甚至引发了对国家安全的担忧。安全的数字基础设施、网络安全标准和法规是当今数字经济的重要支柱。随着技术和数据跨境流动，需要国际合作和信任来制定全球标准和执行机制。中国可以为关于如何治理和保护数字世界的全球讨论做出贡献。

第三，技术创新重塑金融业。金融科技的兴起带来了新的挑战和风险。随着越来越多的交易转向金融科技，消费者、投资者、货币政策以及更广泛的金融稳定和诚信都面临着新的风险。大型科技公司在金融领域的作用越来越大，带来了进一步的监管挑战。政策制定者面临的挑战是，一方面要在促进金融创新和加强竞争之间找到适当的平衡，另一方面要解决消费者保护、数据安全以及金融完整性和稳定性方面的风险。实现正确的平衡是一项正在进行的工作。Taylor et al.(2020)指出金融科技领域的问题主要集中在对云计算巨头的依赖、存款安全、信贷提供风险以及金融监管机构对超级科技的依赖。国际货币基金组织和世界银行于2018年制定了巴厘岛金融科技议程，为各国的政策设计提供了一个框架，利用金融科技的优势，同时保持金融体系的健全。其中包括如何促进新产品、活动和中介的安全进入，如何降低金融科技滥用的风险，如何确保国内货币金融体系的稳定，如何评估金融科技创新对中央银行业务和市场结构的影响。

技术变革帮助世界应对了一个世纪以来最严重的健康危机。技术提供了许多好处，但也带来了必须应对的风险。政策的设计应谨慎和协调，并清楚地传达给利益相关者和市场。对话有助于在国家内部利益集团之间以及在国际金融组织推动下的国家之间制定正确的政策。有了正确的政策，技术可以成为增长和共享繁荣的新动力。

作者 | 曾颂华，IMI国际委员、国际货币基金组织（IMF）亚太区原副总裁

英文原文如下：

Transformative Powers of Technology in the Post-Covid World: Opportunities and Challenges

By Wanda Tseng

Technology was already pervasive in our lives, spurred by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, big data, super-computing, and cryptography. But the covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the technology transformation. Technology most certainly reduced the disruptive effects of the pandemic. People are doing more than ever from home—buying, learning, working, and socializing. Businesses are learning that they have to go digital or go out of business, migrating their operations and workforce to a virtual environment. Governments are using technology to battle the pandemic—testing, contact tracing, vaccinations, and to deliver much needed fiscal support to vulnerable populations. Technology innovation, adoption, and adaptation will become even more important in adjusting to a post-pandemic world.

Technological innovations: Benefits and Risks

Technology brings clear benefits in terms of widerconsumer choice, economic inclusion and efficiency, and new business opportunities and jobs. An example is fintech. With access to smartphones and internet connections, fintech has propelled financial inclusion at affordable cost in many developing countries. This enabled access to micro loans, market information, cross-border payments and remittances, and reduced counter-party risks. Another example is Alibaba’s e-commerce platform that expanded market access especially for small and medium sized businesses in remote areas. Technology has also improved public services and government accountability, for example, in revenue collection and expenditure targeting of social assistance, and making government services more inclusive, fair, and transparent.

But the disruptive impact of technology, creating uncertainties about the future, also brings risks.Countries are confronting growing concerns in many areas: social disruptions and rising inequalities, competition, the market power of giant technology companies (big tech), cyber risks, how data is collected and used, and how technology companies are taxed.To reap the opportunities from technology transformation while containing the risks, countries would have to implement new policies for the digital age. This paper discusses three areas of risk and how they might be addressed: rising inequality, the regulatory framework, and fintech and financial stability.

Rising Inequality

Foremost among the risks are the impact of technology on jobs and income and wealth inequality. John Maynard Keynes was already concerned about the job destroying effects of technology in the 1930s. He foresaw that technological disruptions create technology unemployment that has broader social and political consequences. A study by Sedik (2018) finds that in Asia, automation has a slight negative impact on overall manufacturing employment in heavily automated sectors like electronics and automobiles. Workers with medium-level education are more vulnerable than workers with either low or high education because jobs most susceptible to automation involve routine tasks done by workers with mid-level skills.

In his famous study on income inequality Capital in the 21st Century, Piketty (2014) finds that economic growth has become much less shared since the 1980s. In the United States in 1980, the top 1 percent of the population held about 10 percent of national income; by 2016, the top 1 percent held 20 percent of national income. In 1980, the bottom 50 percent of Americans held more than 20 percent of national income, but its share shrank to 13 percent in 2016. So, there has been a transfer of 7 percent of national income from the bottom 50 percent to top 1 percent. Several factors contributed to the rise in income inequality in the United States: massive educational inequalities, the compensation system in American companies where the average salary of a CEO increased to more than 300 times that of an average worker by 2017 compared with 20 times in 1965, a tax system that grew less progressive over time, and the erosion in the bargaining power of labor unions.

Inequality has risen in many countries around the world, including China, putting inequality at the top of the global policy agenda. Acemoğlu (2021) finds that since the 1980s, technology accounts for much of the rise in income inequality, together with other factors such as globalization and the declining power of labor unions. He argues that automation has been excessive and has not produced gains in total factor productivity. This is because when businesses consider whether to replace workers with machines, they do not take into account the social disruptions caused by job loss, especially good jobs, resulting in an excessive bias toward automation. Instead, Acemoğlu recommends that businesses should consider productivity gains that could come from changes in tasks, organizational forms, and technology breakthroughs that are more complementary to humans. He suggests that the government has a role to play to incentivize “human friendly” technological advances that produce good jobs.

While some income inequality is inevitable in incentive-based economic systems, a study by Ostry et al. (2014) finds that excessive inequality is detrimental to growth. This is because inequality fuels discontent and social polarization, erode social trust, and threaten national cohesion, making it difficult to implement policies needed to adjust to shocks that are necessary for sustainable economic growth. The study finds that fiscal redistribution to reduce income inequality is associated with higher and more durable economic growth.

The pandemic crisis has amplified inequalities within and across countries. Within countries, the IMF (2021) finds that the burden of the crisis has been felt unequally across different groups. Unequal access to technology drove unequal outcomes in education, opportunities, and access to health and financial services. Workers with less education, youth and women, and those informally employed in gig jobs have suffered disproportionate income losses. Because the pandemic has accelerated the transformative forces of digitalization and automation, many of the jobs lost are unlikely to return, requiring worker reallocation across sectors, and often the new jobs people find pay substantially less than their previous jobs.

To “build back better” from the pandemic, a more inclusive sharing of the opportunities offered by technology should be a priority. This requires policies to cushion the labor market impact of new technologies and reduce inequality. Education and training, including lifelong long learning and continuous training, should aim to give today’s workers the means to thrive in the digital age. Education should focus not only on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects but also those fostering creativity and empathy, as jobs requiring these skills are least likely to be replaced by robots. The specific policy requirements are different in different countries. But consideration could be given to ensuring a living minimum wage, a more robust and expanded social safety net, and universal basic income; taxation could be made more progressive to achieve a more equitable income distribution. The goal should be to achieve a more equitable sharing of prosperity.

Upgrading the regulatory framework

Policymakers need to examine the regulatory framework to make sure they are appropriate for the digital age. The regulatory framework encompasses many facets; four areas are highlighted here: competition, data privacy, accountability, and cybersecurity.

Competition. When the technology sector first emerged, the marketplace was fiercely competitive and many startups failed. However as the technology sector expanded, “winner takes all” outcomes became more prevalent. McKinsey (2017) projects that in China digitization promises to shift and create value equivalent to 10- 45 percent of total industry revenues in four key sectors by 2030 (consumer and retail, automotive and mobility, health care, and freight and logistics). Such major disruptions will create losers and winners and disproportionate value will go to the winners.

Competition policies need to be updated for the technology era. Innovations should not become the property of a few large firms that came first in a winner-take-all sweepstake. Regulations need to focus on ensuring innovation, the entry of smaller firms, and to ensure that established firms do not gobble up the next Google, Facebook, or Alibaba. Countries have taken different approaches. The United States has generally accepted market dominance earned through competition in the marketplace as long as it leads to greater efficiencies, benefits consumers, and promotes innovation. The European Union, in contrast, has focused anti-trust enforcement on protecting entry of potential competitors, even if existing market leaders managed to outperform their competitors and earned their dominant positions. China recently also took actions against anti-competitive practices of big tech companies in areas, including online retailing and access to data assets.

Data privacy. Data on our daily lives is the essential ingredient for quantum computing and AI analytics. Data has been invaluable in the fight against the covid-19 pandemic. Locational apps allowed authorities to know the movements of people, helping with decisions about whether lock-downs are needed to contain the virus spread. Contact tracing apps notified people who may have been close to those infected so that they can quarantine. Experience during the pandemic show that data collection and analysis can play a beneficial social role.

At the same time, revelations about the misuse of data for private gain, such as the infamous case of Oxford Analytica and Facebook, heighten concerns about how data privacy is protected and how the data collected is monetized. Until recently, many countries had lax data privacy protection, merely asking consumers to check the consent box after reading a long legalistic text. The entity that collects the data gets to keep them and use them largely to its own benefit, and data has become a very valuable asset.

Carrière-Swallow and Haksar (2021) suggest that commercial interests and incentives for innovation must be balanced with the need to build public trust through protection of privacy and data integrity. The European Union’s 2018 implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) advances in this direction. The GDPR was designed to improve how data is stored and used by giving more control to individuals over their information and by obliging companies to handle the data collected more carefully. EU residents now have the right to access their data and to limit how it is processed, and these rights are being enforced with increasingly heavy fines.

Carrière-Swallow and Haksarsuggest consideration be given to creating public data utilities—similar to credit registries—that could balance public needs with individual rights. An independent agency could be tasked with collecting and making anonymous certain classes of individual data, which could then be made available for analysis, subject to the consent of interested parties. They pointed to possible uses for such data utilities, such as contact tracing to fight pandemics, better macroeconomic forecasting, and combating money laundering and terrorism financing.

Carrière-Swallow and Haksar further suggest the need to help data sharing, circumscribed by clear rules, so that consumers are not confined to specific data ecosystems, thus contributing to competition. For example, third-party interoperability is being used in healthcare to allow doctors to have quick access to patients’ lab results. The European Union’s late-2020 proposals for the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act advances in this direction; it includes third-party interoperability requirements for big tech “gate-keepers”—including social media and online marketplaces—in certain situations and rules to make it easier for consumers to port their data to different platforms.

Accountability. Technology has transformed how people get information, even raising questions about what are facts. The detrimental effects of the proliferation of fake news, conspiracy theories, information silos have been demonstrated across many countries--from election of extremist leaders, to attacks against certain groups, to skepticism about life-saving vaccines. Yet, how to ensure accountability of information is a fraught with difficult choices. Should private entities, using algorithms to detect hate speech and fake news, be responsible for policing information flows or should this be the purview of the state? There is not a one size fits all solution. The respective responsibilities of the private sector and the state need to be defined by societies themselves, taking into account their own political systems and societal preferences. The aim of policies should to allow the free flow of information while preventing the spread of rumors and fake news; this easier said than done.

Cybersecurity. Cyber threats increase with greater reliance on technology. The consulting company Deloitte (2021) reports that cyber security threats, including data breaches, hacking, spear phishing, ransomware, etc. increased tremendously during the pandemic as activities moved online. The pattern of threats has become more global and has affected a broader range of industries, even raising concerns about national security. A secure digital infrastructure, cybersecurity standards, and regulations are essential pillars in today’s digital economy. As technology and data move across borders, international cooperation and trust are needed to develop global standards and enforcement mechanisms. China can contribute to the global discussion on how to govern and secure the digital world.

Fintech and financial stability

Technology is rapidly transforming the financial industry. Innovations such as mobile payments, P2P loans such consumer financing and microloans, wealth management, insurance have all contributed to expanding financial inclusion, reducing transactions cost and time, and increasing incomes and productivity. The Economist (February 25, 2017) cites China as the world leader in fintech, noting that China is the world’s biggest market for digital payments, online lending, and home to 4 out of the top 5 most innovative fintech firms.

However, the rise fintech also brings new challenges and risks. As more and more transactions move to fintech, new risks arise for consumers, investors, monetary policy, and more broadly to financial stability and integrity. Fintechdisrupts the business models of established financial institutions and leads to a migration of activities outside the regulated system. For example, fintech firms partner with banks and make huge loans with little capital or liquidity requirements, incentivizing excessive risk taking. Their partnerships with established banks in activities such as lending, wealth management, and insurance create moral hazard.  Crypto currencies, which are developing quickly in Asia, pose risks for money laundering, tax evasion, criminal activity, and circumvention of capital controls.

The growing role of big tech in the financial sector presents further regulatory challenges. Unlike their Western counterparts, big tech companies in Asia, especially China, have become key providers of financial services, replacing traditional financial institutions. Big techs operating in finance are subject to a combination of specific financial industry regulations that apply to banking, extending credit, and transmitting payments, and to general laws and regulations on data protection and competition.

However, Crisanto and Ehrentraud (2021) point out that the current regulatory approach does not pay due attention to the unique features of big tech business models and the corresponding risks. Big tech’s activities blur the lines between the financial sector and other industries. Finance-specific and cross industry regulations are geared toward individual legal entities within big tech groups for the particular activities they perform. However, big tech usually includes numerous group entities that perform highly interrelated activities, making it particularly difficult to assess their risk profile. Moreover, big tech’s business models are continuously evolving. The lack of transparency of big tech groups and the multitude of regulators overseeing different aspects of big tech operations further complicate the picture. Furthermore, international frameworks for data governance, operational resilience, and group-wide risks are fragmented, leaving room for regulatoryarbitrage, policy gaps, and a build-up of financial stability risks across borders.

How should fintech be regulated? Countries are experimenting with “sandboxes,” where firms can test innovations under close regulatory scrutiny, to find answers. The challenge to policymakers to find the right balance between enabling financial innovations and reinforcing competition on the one hand and addressing risks to consumer protection, data security, and financial integrity and stability on the other. Coming up with the right balance is a work in progress.

Taylor et al. (2020) pointed to four areas in fintech where concerns are growing: increasing reliance on cloud computing giants, safety of deposits, risks of credit provision, and increasing reliance on suptech by financial supervisors.

• Reliance on cloud computing providers. Fintech, as many other industries, increasingly rely on the outsourcing of IT services for core operations. However, outsourcers have become very dependent on cloud computing service providers. Cloud providers often move the source of their services around their networks so there is no longer a place for a customer or a regulator to go to monitor and mitigate risks. Cloud providers may also be reluctant to open up the inner workings of their systems to a regulator’s scrutiny. Furthermore, the cloud industry is very concentrated globally, limited to a few giants, so that any failures or disruptions in their operations create systemic risks. Oversight of cloud service providers is needed.

• Safety of customers’ deposits. Countries are grappling with how to ensure the safety of customer funds held by fintech companies. Should the safety net enjoyed by bank costumers be extended to fintech customers? Some countries have ruled this out; others are asking deposit-taking fintech companies to make corresponding deposits in regulated banks, or to create their own deposit insurance pools. These approaches are still being developed. Bankruptcy procedures for fintech remain to be worked out.

• Capital and liquidity requirements. Fintech companies lend without capital or liquidity requirements, offloading the risk to regulated financial institutions they partner with. Sufficient capital and liquidity can absorb losses and incentivize providers to take risk management seriously. More generally, licensing practices can be changed to encourage or require fintech to come within the regulatory framework so their risks can be monitored.

• Risks faced by supervisors embracing fintech in their own operations. Supervisors increasingly are embracing suptech to manage the ever-increasing data flows from regulated entities, improve analytical capabilities, and to take advantage of big data. This can offer benefits in improving oversight and surveillance, but also carries risks related to the capacity of supervisors, operations, and data.

The IMF and World Bank developed the Bali Fintech Agenda in 2018 to provide a framework for countries to consider in designing policies to harness the benefits of fintech while keeping the financial system sound. These include how to facilitate the safe entry of new products, activities, and intermediaries; how to mitigate the risks of criminal misuse of fintech, using technologies to strengthen compliance with anti money laundering measures; how to ensure the stability of domestic monetary and financial systems; how to assess the implications of fintech innovations to central banking services and market structure.

Concluding Observations

The transformative powers of technology have helped the world confront the most serious health crisis in a century. Technology offers many benefits, but it also comes with disruptions and risks that must be addressed and mitigated. Policies can change the impact of technology to serve society better. Countries need to consider policies to protect vulnerable groups from technology dislocations, help workers adjust and adapt to the digital age, and reduce inequality. Regulatory frameworks need to be upgraded to facilitate competition, protect data privacy, ensure accountability for dissemination of information, and protect cybersecurity. Regulation and supervision of fintech need to be strengthened for financial stability, while facilitating innovations. Policies should be designed with care and coordination, and communicated clearly to stakeholders and markets. Dialogue can help in designing the right policies, within countries among interested groups, and among countries facilitated by international financial organizations. With the right policies, technology can be a new driver for growth and shared prosperity.

编译  胡斌

编辑  薛舒宁

责编  李锦璇、蒋旭

监制  朱霜霜

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