This September marks the two-year anniversary of the launch of the Online Labour Index, the experimental economic indicator on the utilisation of online labour. This is the first in the series of blog posts describing what we have learned from the data. The paper accompanying the Online Labour Index was just accepted for publication in… Read More »
The impacts of technological change on jobs have been a topic of much interest over recent decades. Existing economic statistics are in general prone to mismeasuring the value of digital activities and investments, because these are often not directly related to production, but to development, design, and marketing, whose value is harder to establish. Existing… Read More »
Gig economy platforms seem to provide extreme temporal flexibility to workers, giving them full control over how to spend each hour and minute of the day. What constraints do workers face when attempting to exercise this flexibility in practice, and how can platform design influence this? I have just posted on SSRN a new paper… Read More »
PublicDomainPictures/Pexels (CCO) Firms have been using temporary staffing agencies to find and hire temporary workers for short-term assignments since the 1940s. Temporary workers were initially used to cover for their in-house employees when on leave. Yet, many firms today use agencies to hire temporary workers as part of their flexible workforce. Agencies provide value to… Read More »
This is a guest article written by OII doctoral candidate Godofredo Ramizo Jr., who is researching the socio-political impact of ride apps in Southeast Asian megacities. Uber and other ride hailing companies have battled regulators in Europe and the US, and faced suspensions in the midst of violent protests from threatened taxi operators and their… Read More »
Online labour platforms allow companies to source work from freelancers over the Internet on an on-demand basis. We know that this phenomenon grew about 26 percent globally over the past year, and there is an increasing amount of research available on workers who work through these platforms (including our own). But there is a gap… Read More »