It is impossible to think deeply about the modern economy and its technological achievements without also recognising the fundamental tensions affecting governance, the environment, and the ways in which we live and work. Technological and economic change can create enormous opportunities for social improvement, but also significant new risks. Ensuring that the benefits of these changes are maximised, while risks are mitigated, is one of the central challenges facing the next generation of leaders in private firms, government, and civil society.
The newly established Governance, Environment, and Technology (GET) Group aims to contribute to this task, building an academic group with research and teaching expertise in the following areas:
- Governance: how the state functions; how it relates to and regulates firms; how civil society, private firms, and the state interact in equilibrium; how regulation and redistribution can mitigate the risks associated with climate change and labour-replacing technologies; how politics relates to technological change.
- Environment: how climate change can be mitigated using market incentives and non-market institutions, and how managers can navigate the associated uncertainty; how firms can direct technological change to address environmental risk; and how climate risk and environmental shocks interact with politics.
- Technology: how technological change is directed, by firms, governments, and civil society; how technological change affects social challenges (e.g., inequality, environmental degradation); how technological change affects governance and the quality of public discourse.