Cars and Clouds in 2025
Some reflections on 2024 and what's to come in the new year
Happy New Year, and thanks for subscribing to Value Added!
For this week, rather than writing an analytic-styled post, I wanted to reflect on what I've written so far and share some thoughts on where Value Added will be headed in the new year.
Some reflections
Since starting this blog in November, I've written on various topics on the political economy of innovation. So far, these have included industrial policy, green manufacturing, Chinese economic development, and productivity limitations in the service sector. My analysis draws primarily from two sub-disciplines: comparative political economy and development economics. Some of my posts have highlighted the contours of various debates in these sub-fields. Others have introduced new frameworks for understanding and comparing ideas from the literature. In all, they've functioned primarily as "lit reviews" of sorts.
As a PhD candidate, writing these has been a tremendously valuable exercise. Rather than focusing only on academic peer-reviewed articles, writing this blog has allowed me to engage with these topics in a lower-stakes and more flexible format. More importantly, it has given me a platform to engage with the kind of scholarly work that has drawn me into studying development and political economy. Hopefully, these posts have also been helpful to you as well.
My favorite pieces so far are:
U.S. and China in comparative perspective
In the coming weeks, I intend to continue producing this kind of analysis. From examining the relationship between technology and different corporate governance structures to exploring the effect of a country's political system of interest representation on the direction of innovation, I have several drafts in the pipeline that I’m excited to share with you.
However, in addition to this, I plan to introduce two additional axes of analysis. The first is to look specifically at innovation in the U.S. and China in comparative perspective. You can expect to see more writing that highlights the particularities of American and Chinese institutions (such as labor and skill regimes, inter-firm relations, corporate governance, etc) as they relates to innovation and industrial policy. Thinking comparatively at the national level is analytically important for me. If you look at a single country in isolation, a lot of its distinctive structures/institutions vanish—comparison is needed to identify and understand why each country is unique. As Professor Thelen, a professor of comparative politics, aptly put it in a seminar I took with her last year, comparison is thinking.
Cars and Clouds
The second axis is to focus on two fast-evolving industries: cloud computing and electric vehicles. Currently, I’m working on a piece about data centers in developing countries and whether they deliver the kind of developmental benefits policymakers often anticipate. I'm also working on a short post that compares the economic spillover of internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) manufacturing and battery electric vehicle (BEV) manufacturing.
I'll be focusing Value Added on these two industries for several reasons. First, my academic research will focus on these two sectors in the coming years. Second, the two sectors are very different, with each requiring very different firm competencies, making them ripe for comparison. I also have over five years of experience working in cloud computing, and I'm excited to bring more of this background to Value Added. Just like having a comparative focus on the U.S. and China, I think looking comparatively at innovation across these two industries will also be fruitful.
As usual, you can continue to expect new posts on Wednesdays (except for the week before and the first week of Chinese New Year since I'll be taking those weeks off). If any of this sounds interesting to you, or if you have feedback to share, please reach out and let me know! Thank you for your support in 2024!